

ORGANIZATION SERIES - PART 10 OF 20

[New name: How To Present Scientology To The World]



TESTING

A lecture given on 15 November 1956

[Start of Lecture]

Okay. I'd like to talk to you now about something I don't know
anything about.

The difference between me talking about something I don't know
anything about and somebody else talking about something he
doesn't know anything about, is the fact that I'll tell you so.

I want to talk to you about testing. Don't know anything about
it, see. As a matter of fact, this is factually true. Don't know
anything about testing and so it's a very, very good subject for
a lecture.

Now, testing was invented sometime, I don't know when, see. I
don't know when it was invented. I don't know who invented it. I
could hazard some guesses. I could say it developed originally
out of the cave days. One caveman would get out and he'd pull a
woman by the hair for a quarter of a mile, and he'd say, "I'm
feeling weak today, I guess. Only made it for a quarter of a
mile," or something like that.

It might have developed then. It might have developed some other
time, but I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. I never read a book
on the subject, either.

The whole subject of testing is probably, though, a very great
subject. I've met an awful lot of people who knew an awful lot
about testing, and so on, but I never had the benefit of
listening to them say very much. They're sort of reticent about
the thing. So I'm quite sure that there is a huge subject known
as testing. I'm sure of it! In other words, I am convinced.

But the facts of the case are that it has never been proven to
me. See, I'm convinced that there is such a subject as testing.
But it has never been proven to me -- it's never been proven to
me conclusively -- that up till the days of Dianetics and
Scientology, it had any value at all. Because what was the good
of knowing somebody's existing state -- what was the good of
knowing it -- if you couldn't do anything about it?

Oh, well, maybe it merely convinced him he was in bad condition.
I know, but what do you want to convince him he's in bad
condition for if you can't do anything about it? Got the idea?
Factually?

So all the tests that we have and are using -- most of them --
are based on just one premise and one premise only: that Homo
sapiens is in an existing state, and their textbooks say that it
can't be altered. So all testing was designed to prove,
evidently, before 1950, is that man couldn't change.

Now, it's interesting that we have found an area where man can't
change. It is very, very difficult to change a man downward. Very
difficult to change a man downward. The things you have to do to
him to change him downward made very good newspaper reading
throughout the end of the Korean War -- brainwashing.

But even a psychologist who only knew these methods couldn't
change people downward with any consistency. And as a consequence
he assumed people couldn't change.

But what would a group that assumed people couldn't change --
what could it have been trying to do?

Now, a man can be changed upward with such ease that it's
fantastic that nobody ever found this out. I mean, if I could
think up something anybody could think it up, see. I mean, it's
easy. How come he never found this out?

Now look, you think I'm trying to lay at the door of psychology
and psychiatry a criminal intent, don't you? Well, that's
absolutely correct.

The discovery that man could not change could only have followed
an effort to degrade him. And for the first time, we are trying
to scale him upwards, and we find that the most elementary things
can change a test upwards. Very elementary things can change a
test upwards.

If you, for instance, were to sit and smile pleasantly at a
preclear for twenty-five hours, he'd probably get better. If you
just said, "Yes, is that so?" you know, "What do you know!"

If any psychoanalyst had ever contented himself with sitting and
listening to some patient rattle on, I'm sure that some patient
not deficient in havingness -- which the comm would have cut down
-- but not terribly deficient of havingness, would have improved
so considerably and so markedly that we would now have libraries
full of books on this one case. That's a "series" in
psychoanalysis -- one case.

The only series on schizophrenia in psychiatry, for instance,
that I know of, that is real schizophrenia, is a series of one:
one girl who assumed five personalities. And although it's been
banned in Boston as pornography, it has made good reading for
everybody else for a long time. And that's a series of one and
that is total information concerning. That's a book by Morton
Prince. You, by the way, would just have a ball reading that book
because he gives you all the dope. He gives you all the clues
necessary to solve the case, and minimizes every one of the clues
and maximizes all the things that are completely unimportant
about the whole thing.

Now, I am not trying to indict psychology, psychiatry,
psychoanalysis or phrenology, or -- I don't know, what are some
of those others? There's one there that had to do with
transmutation of gold into lead or lead into gold or something
like that. Yeah. Alchemy. Oh, yes, yes, modern chemistry.

And I'm not trying to degrade these, because they don't need it.
It's sort of pouring mud in a mudhole, you know.

But when you look over this astonishing fact that today our
testing programs... I don't know a thing about testing, but our
testing programs demonstrate that we can change people and change
them upward at a great rate -- very fast. I mean, it's not
difficult to change people upward -- it's not very difficult.

If a person is on the bottom, sometimes you get some suction
trying to pry him off, but once you get him rising a little bit,
why, he generally goes on up, as long as the auditor will sit
still and listen.

But where do we have any use for testing? You should ask the
question, "Why don't I know anything about testing?" It should
have occurred to you there that there might be some hooker in the
statement, because I don't go around saying, "I don't know," you
know, except when I'm being honest.

But there is really a hooker in the subject. I want to know if
there's anything to know. See, I don't know anything about it.
I've read some books on the subject, and I've done some testing,
and so forth. Is there anything to know about it at all?

Well, the actual fact of testing -- no. There is very, very
little to know about that. The actual fact of existing state is
such a mystery that there's nothing you could know about that.
You see, because it would simply be comparable data. "This person
compares to a twelve-year-old schoolchild." That's a statement,
that is! In what school, which teaches what curriculum, in what
part of the world? See, they don't ever say.

They don't ever say "Jefferson High School, Lincoln, Missouri,"
or something like that, you know. They say a twelve-year-old
schoolchild has the intelligent equivalent of..." I suspect
statements like this. They're not specific, they're not exact,
they have no location, they're floating in space.

So what about this? Well, I do know something about the change of
tests or recorded change. That I know something about. And if
they were more honest, and if they'd ever changed anybody, I
guess that's all a psychologist would know, would be alteration
of condition. Because you can compare one condition to another
condition, but when you say a person has a test like this... What
is the proper curve? Is it up here? Is it down here? Is it over
here? Does it have lace pants on it? What is this? What's the
proper test? What's the proper curve?

Somebody says, "This is the curve of Joe Jones. Joe Jones's curve
is just like that." Everybody stands around and says, "Yeah. What
do you know. That's pretty good. Mm-hm." Or "That's pretty bad,
isn't it?" Compared to what?

Well, it's compared to something called the hidden ideal, the
false ideal, the understood ideal, the suspected ideal or the
represented ideal. Do you understand what the word would be? It
would be an ideal which doesn't exist. But everybody knows it
exists, and we have testing dramatizing this more than any other
single human activity.

It is a hidden fact behind all criticism -- whether of plays or a
person or cats, kings, coal heavers or bats or pigs with wings --
that there is an ideal, there is a perfection "That I know about,
but you wouldn't," which is never spoken. And we should call this
the pretended ideal.

There is evidently an ideal state in Mother's mind when she says
we are bad children. There is evidently an ideal state in the
sergeant's mind when he says we are poor soldiers. There is
evidently some ideal of some kind or another in the priest's mind
when he says we are sinful.

But they damn seldom say anything about what it is! They say we
don't measure up in comparison to it. What?

We read in the papers, "This is a poor play." See, some critic,
he's sounding off, "It's a poor play." Well, you could say, "Who
said so?" That's easy -- the critic. But by whose standards of
playwrighting? Now, this thing did appear on Broadway, and I'm
sure compared to Bill Smith's play -- Billy Smith being only in
the third grade -- that it shined. See? So that would make it an
excellent play, wouldn't it, huh?

But compared to one of those little things Shakespeare dashed off
between sonnets, the thing might not be quite so good. But then I
am sure that people walked up to Shakespeare and said, "Well,
Bill. Ah, well. This thing -- this -- this thing you've done
tonight -- what was its, name? Uh... uh... Hamlet. Hamlet? Was
that it? Uh... Bill, uh... I don't think it'll go. It won't go,
Bill. It's a poor play." Compared to what? The one that the
critic said was a poor play, or Billy Smith in the third grade
said was a poor play, or compared to the Passion Play as done at
Oberammergau, or a poor play compared to Bill's last effort.
Well, possibly, you could get a comparison there, couldn't you?

So we've moved into about the only standard that could exist, "Is
the fellow being bad or good compared to himself?" And that is
what testing is in Scientology. Is he being bad or good compared
to him? Is he being better or worse than him?

Well, unfortunately for the guy, we happen to know how good he
can get. So we can measure him up against this standard. So,
being honest, we can say a change is attainable in existing state
and we are interested in the change, we are not interested in
either existing state, don't you see.

But there are certain existing states necessary to the
performance of auditing -- we say to auditors -- so, therefore we
know that auditors that fall below this existing state, fall
below it. This we know for sure. They fall below being able to
audit. They crack up somewhere along the line. They say to the
preclear, just about the twenty-fifth time, "Now, go over to the
book. That's right. Look at it. What color is it?" And they all
of a sudden say, "Heh-uu-hu-hm-hm, let's go out for a Coke." The
preclear at this moment has somatics; he's about ready to drop
his eyeballs on the floor. "Let's' knock off the, session. I
can't stand it anymore."

And we know that they will do certain things below that state.
But we, then, do have some kind of an idea about the state
auditors should be in. And if we're certifying an auditor, we
want to know if he's in some comparable state, but that again is
against a known standard. It's a known standard.

Well, who's it known to? Well, boy, if you were this guy's
preclear, you'd know it. See, it'd be known to you too. The
fellow has to be able to persist, duplicate, communicate,
acknowledge communications. He has to be able to get in there and
pitch. He has to be smart enough to be able to figure out where
the preclear won't go and make him go or knock his head in. He
has to be able to do certain things, see. And we can test what
sort of a condition a fellow has to be in, in order to make
somebody do those things. That's very easy. It's very easy. But
it is a standard. It's a known standard, not a hidden standard.
It's very important.

This pretended standard, this hidden ideal, this thing which
lurks in the back of people's minds when they say "We aren't
smart enough. We aren't good enough. We aren't quick enough," is
actually the basis of all criticism to which we object. Because
we essentially are not objecting to their statement that we
aren't good enough. We're objecting to the fact that they never
say in comparison with what. They never say what we are supposed
to be as good as, what we are supposed to be as fast as.

Therefore, we rather favor physical tests, things like that. Can
we broad-jump five feet? Anybody in order to join this team has
to broad-jump five feet, see. We know what we're doing then. We
can broad-jump five feet, therefore we have passed the test. But
it's only a standard that is set down, and somebody has found out
that an athlete or a soldier or somebody has to be able to go
through certain actions, since athletes and soldiers go through
these actions.

Therefore, the only sincere and honest test that you possibly
could lay down, really, in actuality, would be a test against
observable performance -- observable performance.

Now, to show you how thin this bad and good thing is, a soldier
goes out, sets up a machine gun, fires at a mad rate and misses
completely his target. He doesn't kill a single human being. Bad
soldier. He goes back into civilization, runs down the street,
doesn't even knock over a human being, hits a cop, and we say
he's a bad citizen. The common denominator of these two remarks
is that people are critical.

Now, testing had its origin, I am sure -- this is my suspicion,
since I really know nothing about the subject -- had its origin
in the early days of brainwashing. It was an effort to make
people self-critical, which is a keynote of brainwashing. If you
would test somebody long enough and often enough, you'd drive him
daffy if you never told him what he was being tested for, or
against what standard. You'd have to have a standard against
which he was being tested so that he could achieve, himself, a
comparison of result.

Therefore, I would say that all those tests which simply evaluate
by the observer...

I tell you, here's a test that -- we have a technical expression
which is a condemnatory expression in Scientology -- "It's for
the birds!"

This thing is called a Rorschach. A Rorschach is probably called
a Rorschach uhm... It's a Rorschach. Anyway.

You go four years to a university to learn how to interpret one.
Boy, there sure must be an awful lot there to know how to
interpret. There sure is. I'm sure there's more significance
racked up in less time -- wow! Four years to learn how to
interpret one of these things.

You know what people do with these things? They're inkblot tests.
Kids back in about 1820 used to take some ink, spill it on a
piece of paper, fold the piece of paper over and open it and they
have a pattern, you know.

Well, some psychiatrist got stuck in this period, got the measles
and died back in 1820 or something. And he died when he was doing
this and it's a dramatization, you see, or something like this.
There's an explanation to its origination I know.

Anyway. He shows this to people, he shows this test to people,
and he looks at them and he says, "What do you see? What do you
see?"

And people say, "Ohhh, I see a fox or a bat or a kangaroo or,
uh... it's a flying carpet," or something or other. Each time
they say one of these things, they say, "Well, I think it's a
fox."

"Ahhhhh," he says. "Patient thinks it's a fox." "What else do you
see?"

"A bearskin!"

"Patient thinks it's a bearskin. Patient thought it was fox, then
bearskin. F-B. F-B."

Well, they have about five or fifty of these plates and people
are supposed to read them and so forth.

And it was a source of great embarrassment when one of them
showed me one of these tests. They used to test everybody during
the war. They didn't have anything else to do. And you get
shipped in. They'd run out of clinics to send you to, you know.
Go get your teeth fixed, go get this fixed, go get that fixed.
Nobody would let you out of the joint, you see. You were there
awaiting receipt of orders or something of the sort, you know,
and so they would keep sending you to clinics, here and there.

So, of course, they'd send you to a testing clinic. They'd send
you to the psychological clinic. They'd send you to the
psychiatric clinic. They'd just send you around. You go around
and people would spend an hour or so looking you over, and that
sort of thing.

I almost got scared out of my wits! It just -- it frightened me.
I was very timid in those days. And I sat down and... I was
supposed to go to the psychiatric clinic, the eye clinic, and so
forth.

The eye clinic didn't know what was the matter with me. I
couldn't see. I kept telling them that was what was the matter
with me -- they didn't believe me. And anyhow, I went in the
psychiatric clinic, and I sat down. And all of a sudden he says,
"Ahhh!" he says, "Ahhh!" And it was a very, very learned "Ahhh!"
I will say.

And he shoved a Rorschach test at me. He didn't have anything
else to do, or I was the wrong patient or something. He was
confused maybe. And he shoved this test at me, and he says,
"What's that?"

And I said, "It is a piece of paper with some ink on it! What do
you suppose it is!"

Four days later he was still looking in his manuals.

I don't know to this day whether I'm supposed to be sane or
insane, you see. Because there's nothing in any Rorschach manual
that tells you what this response means. It frightened me all
right, and he turned sort of pale and he jumped up on the table
and took off his glasses. He started to chitter, you know.

So I took the test and I showed it to him! I said, "All right,
you don't like that answer! What's it mean to you?" So he got
back in his chair and sat there, and when I left he was still
staring at it. Anyway...

We didn't have much respect for people in those days.

Well, anyway, having been given a Rorschach from beginning to
end, of course, I'm wise enough to know I don't know all there is
to know about Rorschachs. But this isn't the case with most
people. When they've been given a Rorschach, you see, they become
experts on Rorschach. And I'm smart enough to know that I have my
limitations. Definitely have my limitations. I couldn't even read
anything into it. And that's pretty good for a science-fiction
writer. Anyway... I should have at least told him there was a
spaceship there.

Anyway, looking over the whole subject of testing, one learns
that there could be tests which simply measured against a
standard necessary for performance, see. You had to be able to do
something. Well, where did they come in relationship to that so
they could do that? Well, you see, there'd be a role there for
testing, definitely a valuable one.

Now, that's fine. But they don't call that psychological testing,
usually. There is some sort of testing in psychology that goes in
that direction, but usually that's done out on the athletic
field, or it's done somewhere else. "Can you drive this car
around the block?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if you drive well, you can have the job. Well, get in the
car and drive it around the block." He does, he drives it around
the block, and he says, "Okay, you've passed." See, now that is a
type of testing which is against a standard. A person to be able
to drive a car must be able to sit in the car, must be able to
operate the throttle, the brake, and wiggle the steering wheel.
That's all that is required in the District, anyway.

Here then is testing. When we reduce it into a tremendous
additional significance, we are liable to get into more trouble
than we care to get into, unless we wish to measure a state of
case against a state of case. We take a state of case this week,
and a state of case next week. We take these two states of case
and find the difference between them.

Well, in view of the fact that nobody has ever been able to make
states of case vary like this, it would really amuse you how
stable these profiles are. I saw one the other day which would
utterly knock your hat off.

This fellow was given a profile -- a type of profile which we
have had in use in the organization. And he was given this
profile before he went in the army. And in the army they used him
for a guinea pig or something of the sort, and he had a nervous
breakdown and had a lot of psychiatric treatment and so forth.
And at the end of this time he had varied about fifteen degrees
on "Nervous," and the rest of the profile was all the same.

In other words, here's this tremendous career, all this
treatment, this hammer and pound, and the only variation on the
test was about fifteen percentile in "Nervous." He was a little
more nervous. It took them years to manage that.

Well, that's an existing state. But as long as it's not against
anything, as long as all states measured are the states measured,
we really don't know anything about this thing called sanity,
because nobody ever found anybody that everybody agreed was sane.
See, so there is no agreed standard for sanity. So a test never
could tell you whether you were batty or walking down the chalk
line. No test really could factually tell you this.

There is an oblique way of using a test that way which will amuse
you, and that is if the person can't and won't take it, why, you
can assume something wrong -- either in your offering it to him
or his acceptance of it. And that's pretty positive evidence --
we don't know for what, but it's pretty good.

But these tests when given are stable. They are very stable. In
Scientology, we push the guy upscale -- a direction nobody ever
went before -- and they just move upscale just like that. Bzzzzz.
Really, really fabulous. I mean, we change the existing state,
and then we can measure how much it's changed by the new state.
Interesting that we have now a comparison of states.

And in view of the fact that we have some standard required for a
fellow to audit, and knowing this is more arduous than living,
why, we can say the fellow has to be in this kind of a condition
with this profile to get along fairly well in life, and we can do
something about it. But we still don't know anything about
testing.

We really don't know anything about testing. We know about a
comparison with a comparison. We compare his new profile with the
profiles that we know are necessary to auditors in order to
audit, and we compare this profile with his old profile. And the
only starting ground it has is auditors have often folded up when
they weren't fairly high in tone on certain points. And when they
are high in tone in these points, they couldn't care less. I
mean, they can get chewed up like mad and they're not chewed up.
You get the idea? But it's by comparison.

Now, nobody, then, would ever be able to give you a test, get any
answers off of it and be able to say that you were peculiarly
sane or peculiarly insane. Nobody would be able to give you a
test and say this, just bluntly, bang, without comparison to
something. It'd have to be "saner than what?" see? "More insane
than whom?" You'd have to have some sort of a standard.

Well, in view of the fact most tests are developed from some
standard or another, we then have some concept of their accuracy.

I'll give you some idea of how tests are developed as to
standard. It's an interesting way to get a standard. We take 259
Safeway store managers and have them grade their stockmen. We
take the 259 managers, and we say whether their stockmen are bad
or good, happy or unhappy, efficient or inefficient, you see. And
then we test the stockmen, and then we assign the value of the
Safeway manager, and we've got the leading -- huh! -- leading
efficiency test of the country.

Now, listen, I've known some Safeway managers, and they were good
men. Nothing wrong with that, but they weren't ever noted for
their human charity. In other words, what have we got, finally,
as the standard? We've got the opinions of 259 Safeway managers,
not coordinated against each other at all, but each one assigned
to his particular stockmen. And this is a standard? That's why I
don't know anything about testing. Get the idea?

It also says the scores were weighted. I don't know why they were
weighted though. In other words, we test the efficiency of people
against the opinion of Safeway managers, and I'm not working in a
Safeway so the test couldn't possibly work on me, don't you see.

But we could take any test, no matter how arbitrary, and get a
curve on quite a few people, and then process them for a while,
and then get a new curve. And we could say then this process on
these people gets us this change. You got it? And in view of the
fact that nothing else has ever been able to change this test, we
must have been changing the test. Not even Russian brainwashing
or sergeant brainwashing could alter this profile, thus an
auditor must be doing something.

Now, we observe the fellow in life, and we find out that he no
longer -- well, he's dropped a lot of his nastier habits. He's
dropped a lot of his nastier habits. For instance, he no longer
sits silent while his mother-in-law is talking. See, that's
dropped a nasty habit. He hasn't permitted himself to be arrested
for just months, see. I mean the guy's getting in better shape.

For instance, he used to read all the time the Wall Street
Journal. Although he didn't buy stocks or anything else, he used
to -- you know, he had nasty habits. And he'd never read the
"Ball Street Journal." (That's another paper entirely.) And now
he only reads the "Ball Street Journal," see. In other words, he
changed, his conduct in life changed.

It used to be that he let the other fellow keep the job for him,
and now he can even work. See, something has happened here.
Performance has shifted.

So, we in Scientology come straight back to performance. What is
our standard? The standard is "Can an auditor who gets this curve
on this test audit?" Our findings have been, yes. So that's a
satisfactory curve. He's able to stand up to a lot of clawing.
All right. Therefore, his auditing performance is acceptable. To
whom? To us! We're not reticent!

Well, if it's acceptable to us, why, it's probably acceptable to
preclears because that's what's acceptable to us. We're honest.
And it's true enough it does. It is acceptable then to preclears.
And the fellow leads a successful life. He even has a successful
auditing career. He's able to do things with Scientology and
auditing, don't you see. But that's a performance test, isn't it?

And can he hold his own in his environment -- domestic
environment and so forth? Yes. All right. Therefore, that's a
performance, an observable performance, isn't it.

Well, now, the reason I don't know anything about testing at all
is because testing itself is an esoteric subject. It is a very
deep subject, and the reason I don't know anything about it is
its standards are all hidden

Original psychological testing was designed to tell us that
people were bad or not quite bad or worse. And it was designed
against these lines and so on. I'm sure I'm maligning them. There
are many psychologists that have gone out and made a sincere
effort to test, actually, four or five living beings before they
released a test which was standard sanity for everybody in the
United States. I'm sure they've done this. I'm sure they have,
before they released it and said, "We have tested a thousand
people." I'm sure they did test a couple, maybe the wife.

But the main thing that I'm getting at is that we have found --
we're very tolerant -- we have found that these tests were
useful, very useful, extremely useful. For the first time we
found a use for them. And I should be standing here sounding off
about psychologists, when they worked, for I don't know how many
hundred years they worked. It was since 1879 on physiological
psychology, and a lot longer earlier than that on a noncommunist
line of approach. And they worked for all of these decades. They
worked, they slaved, they amassed figures, papers, they tested
people, they thought of things, they filed things, they unfiled
things, they published books, they plagiarized each others'
stuff; just all these years and years and years and years and
years, just so that we could come along and find, for the first
time, a use for their activity. And so I should malign them. I
shouldn't at all. They undoubtedly have done us a very great
service.

Well, they've done us a tremendous service as a matter of fact.
Tremendous. I've known just exactly what to throw away here in
the last week or so that I've been working on a new test battery
for us. Yes, I have. I mean, they've given me all the things you
don't do. A tremendous number of things, tremendous assistance.

You look down the thing, and you say, "Well, that couldn't
possibly tell you anything. Therefore we won't write that kind of
a test. This test over here is highly uninformative. It wouldn't
be of any use to anybody. A total verbalization. Might test
somebody's verbs, but we're not interested in verbs, so we can
push that one aside."

They've done this tremendous amount of work and it has been
extremely useful. It's been extremely useful, and I've been able
to lay it aside. I haven't been able to learn anything about it
particularly -- I don't know anything about it yet, as a matter
of fact. But I do know that it isn't against a performance, and
where it isn't regularly and routinely against a performance, of
what use is it?

Now, if somebody had gone out and tested a thousand racing
drivers or a hundred race drivers and said, "This test on a
thousand (or a hundred) race drivers got this curve" -- wow! Boy,
would I have riches. Boy, that would be riches. If somebody went
out and said, "We routinely took right on down the block in Des
Moines, Iowa" -- see, I'd be able to grade that, for sure --
"right down the block, Des Moines, Iowa. And we tested each
housewife in succession down the block in the year 1927, and we
got this final result." I could even find some use for that. I'd
know that wasn't the curve for all housewives in the country.

If they'd said, "We've taken a great many schoolteachers teaching
elementary school, and we've given them this test and we've
gotten this result." If these factual things on which we could
really count were actually listed, what riches we'd have. But we
actually start from scratch in Scientology.

All we can do is take a series of questions -- almost random
questions -- plot them on some kind of a random curve and say,
"This is a good Scientologist because we know he can audit" -- by
experience. See, we know he's all right.

And we take and run it again, and we say, "Well... not this guy."
And then we know something else. We know, with processing, we can
take this low curve and we can put it up higher and put him into
a bracket where he can perform. See, we know these things. That's
all we know. We don't know anything about testing.

In the first place, there is no such thing as standard
performance. Your behavior today was undoubtedly the best
possible behavior that anybody could have behaved in this society
at this time. But if you had behaved as you behaved today in the
middle of the African jungle, there wouldn't be a one of you
alive tonight. Do you see the slight difference? Now, that's an
extreme example.

Therefore, who could say what is a survival test? -- unless it
would be a survival test against an environment. In other words,
the test must always be against conditions which exist in an
environment. It must always be a test of performance. You follow
that?

It's important, because for years people have been telling you
that you were dumb or mediumly bright or something, see. They
have been telling you that you were bright and dumb or telling
you that you could be smarter or something of the sort, and
they've never told you against what standard. What's the
standard? Brighter than whom? Dumber than which?

I know I had a teacher used to tell me I was awfully dumb all the
time. She used to say, "You are the stupidest child I ever had!"
She used to say this just routinely. "You're the stupidest child
I ever had." She'd just would keep this up. Every day, you know,
I'd try to read something or do something -- "You're the
stupidest child I ever had."

Finally found out what was wrong with her. I went into
consultation with a couple of other kids and I says, "What is the
matter with the old babe?" you know. "What's the matter with
her?"

And they said, "You know, there's times when you're diplomatic."

And I said, "What -- what do you mean diplomatic?"

"You take her an apple."

So I said, "Hey, what do you know!" You know, I was a kid out on
the Western range most of the time, and I learned fast, you know,
quick. And so next time I rode by a neighbor's of ours orchard ,
why, I took her a saddlebag full of apples. Smartest child she
had. Always afterwards the smartest child she had.

So I figured out the standard of performance there was a bag of
apples. So I know when I'm stupider than a bag of apples and
smarter than a bag of apples. I hope you've had the similar good
fortune to know what you're stupider than and smarter than.

They give you university examinations, give you high-school
examinations and they give you a grade. The grade says "A," but
they never say "a" what? They say "B," but they never tell you
what to be. They say "C," and send you out of the place stone
blind on any subject you've been studying. Now, that's an awful
pun, a bad series of puns, but bad in comparison to whose?

You just remember that, will you, on tests. It is true that today
we have tailored up a test which tells us that somebody will
cause us trouble. In other words, his performance in our hands
will be deplorable. Maybe the guy's a good marksman. Maybe he'd
be excellent as a shrimp fisherman, down in Mexico shooting
Mexicans. The guy might be... might be -- you know, he might be
anything, you know. But according to our demands on his
performance, such as to sit still and answer pleasantly, he's a
bad character, don't you see.

And when he gets to be a good character, we know that he's
capable of certain performances. We know he's capable of certain
persistences. We know that his ability to handle people, his
ability to live, his ability to do, communicate in general, will
be very good.

But again (and I give you this very factually), from our
viewpoint -- from our viewpoint. He will be able to talk to
people; he will be able to make people better; he will be able to
have the world happy that he's around. But that's only our
narrow-minded viewpoint. He'll be of some value in any community,
since he will produce. He will be missed when he's gone. But
remember, that is only our viewpoint.

And, please observe this, it very well may be true that it is a
terribly incorrect viewpoint. Maybe it's completely too narrow;
maybe it's a worthless viewpoint entirely, you see. Maybe the
actuality is that a fellow who is in a rage all the time, who
stamps his feet, who makes everybody miserable, that kicks dogs
when they've been hit by cars and spanks kids who have just sat
on hot stoves -- maybe these people are the salt of the earth.
But it just happens they're not, from our viewpoint. But it's our
idiotically narrow-minded viewpoint that objects to this. You
understand that? I mean, it may not be true that these are bad
people. They're bad from our viewpoint.

It may require people like this to aberrate people so that we can
process them. You see, there's always this sort of thing to think
of. There's always something to think about like that.

It may be that standards of performance vary. Now, you take
Tarzan's standard of performance. I was a great student of
Tarzan's. I used to read Edgar Rice Burroughs quite regularly
when I could... The librarian ordinarily wouldn't let me have
books. I kept them too long, and so forth, and read them too
arduously: read right straight back through their covers and
things like that, and very bad habits. And I'd never have money
enough to pay the fines of the books I already had kept out too
long and which I'd forgotten to return or hadn't finished yet or
something of the sort. We were always having a feud. Fortunately,
there was a small window at the back of the library, so I checked
my own books in and out. Anyway...

Edgar Rice Burroughs's stories of Tarzan were very encouraging to
the youth of America in that day. They were very, very
encouraging. They were a fine, upstanding example of a man acting
like an ape. And I very often used to feel constrained by these
books from highly civilized conduct and that sort of thing. But I
was tremendously intrigued by this since that was a standard of
performance to all young America. See?

If you acted like Tarzan, boy, you were in. Man, who wouldn't be
willing to swing from tree to tree. I done broke my neck more
than once. The dull crash, some old frayed rope strung up one way
or the other, tarzaning from tree to tree, you know. They never
tell you that the arc circumscribed by a rope is the length of
the rope.

But this was still a standard of performance. Now, not modernly,
but just yesterday, I told the two chaps that invented
Superman... I knew them rather well up in New York, and they were
looking for a good idea. And I told them that I thought they were
overdoing it a bit. Seems like I was right: they were overdoing
it from my viewpoint. They got more popular than anything I was
writing. Well anyhow, these boys and Superman, you know.

Now, actually your wearing two identities and being
schizophrenic, from the standpoint of a psychiatrist, would be
extremely questionable -- extremely questionable. I mean,
supposing you met somebody that jumped in behind doors and peeled
off all of his clothes in a public hall and threw on some dyed
underwear and then leaped out of windows, never used doors. From
a psychiatric viewpoint that standard of performance is nuts.

But from young America of a decade ago that was quite acceptable
conduct. Someday you'll have a preclear. These young men are
still growing up, I call to your attention; you do not yet have
them as preclears. And one of these days you will find that you
have a preclear whose only foible is stepping behind doors... and
running around in dyed underwear. The only difference is when you
try to cure him of this, he probably will be able to fly.

Well, although I don't know anything at all about testing, I can
tell you that, finally, standards of performance have to some
degree unwound. There's hardly one of us who hasn't asked himself
the question, "Isn't it better to be mean?" Almost every one of
us has had the feeling that we were a bit soft. We didn't like
flying into the teeth of some human being and making him feel bad
or making her feel bad. We've told ourselves, "We ought to be
tougher. We ought to put up a better front; we ought to be... You
know, know when to snarl, know when to show the sharpened tooth."
And I'm sure that we have walked away occasionally after we've
loaned somebody five dollars or something of the sort and said,
"When am I going to learn to be tough? When am I going to learn
to be tough? When am I going to learn to be hardboiled and just
stand right up to that little kid and say 'No!' When am I going
to learn this?"

And the motto behind this is "Isn't it better to be mean
occasionally? It's only from being kind and a sucker" -- synonym:
being kind, being a sucker -- "being an easy mark, so on. When am
I going to stop being all of these bad, soft things and be a
hard, forthright, capable-of-saying-no person? When am I going to
be able to do that? Isn't it better to be mean? I would be a much
better manager. I would be a much better person if I knew when to
come down with a slight slam. If I could just know, occasionally,
when I should be mean, and if I just was willing to be mean,
wouldn't that be right. Isn't it true that I should be more mean
than I am? Isn't it true that I should be harder, more
forthright, much more positive. I should be able to just take the
people out there and just sweep them aside? And isn't there some
rightness in being tough? Isn't there?"

And I used to ask myself this question. I used to ask myself this
question. Everybody does. And I used to ask myself, "Isn't there
a time when I will finally get rough enough, mean enough, ornery
enough, that people will flinch?" You know. "Something wrong with
me that I don't want to be mean. Something wrong with me."

And I used to think about this occasionally, and as the years
went along I could spot times when I should've been tougher --
you know, I knew it; sure of it -- and very recently, very
recently, ran a series of processes which were highly
informative. Very informative. That person that's willing to
confront other things doesn't ever have to say no, he doesn't
ever have to be mean, he doesn't ever have to be tough at all. As
a matter of fact, it's a silly thing to do; it's a silly thing to
be. It is perfectly all right to be nice to people. It isn't a
weakness at all; nothing weak about being nice. And a matter of
fact, if you aren't, you're in the soup.

You could say that the only times for which you are suffering are
those times when you weren't nice enough, when you weren't kind
enough and when you weren't unmean enough, and those are the only
times from which you're really suffering.

It is not true that being mean gets anybody ahead anyplace.
That's really factual, really factual. Because being mean is
going out of ARC with. And a careful analysis of games conditions
and the processing of preclears demonstrates that if you were to
run the process "Go out of communication with, go out of
communication with, go out of communication with, go out of
communication with," he goes to pieces. Fascinating little test,
isn't it.

"I should be mean. I should say no. I should say I don't want to
communicate with you. I should say I don't want to have anything
more to do with you. I should be able to say, 'You do so-and-so
regardless of the consequences.'" Willingness to mess somebody
else up, you know, being hard about the whole thing.

Well, if you run it on a preclear, you will just run out a few of
his incidents of his doing that, but it's a cut communication the
whole way.

When you deny your fellow man, the only thing which you can deny
is to deny him communication. I don't care how solid the particle
is or how light and airy the particle is. You say "no"; you say
"be mean," you say "be very positive," do this and do that; the
truth of the matter is that you are denying him communication,
one way or the other -- being tough.

The only thing you should ever be tough about is insist that the
other fellow ought to stand on his own feet, too. And the only
way you will ever communicate that to him is to communicate it to
him in a very nice way. Then he's liable to receive it.

Being mean is simply going out of communication with things. And
that's always -- always will be and always has been -- very
aberrative.

So I've got the question answered and have a standard for conduct
at least from a standpoint of aberration. The individual who is
kind, who is decent and who does communicate and who is nice and
who isn't averse to conversation and saying this and doing that,
who is tolerant, and so on, we find gets along beautifully. We
find the things that he runs into in life run out. They don't
pile up on him and swamp him.

But the fellow who's mean and who's ornery and who's cutting
comms all the way along the line, and so on, we find he's in the
soup.

Now, I don't know anything about testing, but all testing must be
conducted against a hidden ideal or a known ideal. But if it's
hidden, somebody must know it. Somebody would have to know this
ideal.

You could test a fellow against a hidden ideal where you knew the
answers to the test and he didn't, but you had better know the
answers to the test.

Therefore, I can tell you tonight that a test which is measured
on the basis of human kindness as a high and human meanness as a
low is a standard of human optimum performance. That sounds very
silly, and that's a very obvious sort of a thing to discover, but
nevertheless it's a discovery.

I don't know anything about testing, but now I think I know how
to make one. I think I know how a decent fellow would grade and
how a bad one would grade because I know the answer at last to
whether I should have been mean all those times or whether I
should have been more kind. And I know I should have been more
kind.

Thank you.

[End of Lecture]
