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The attainment of happiness...  
 

"True pleasure leads toward happiness. The 'pleasure' which tends toward death is a reactive counterfeit, but seems intensely valid to those in the death bracket of the Tone Scale.

"Happiness could be said to be the overcoming of not unknowable obstacles toward a known and desirable goal.

"This postulates that the greatest happiness is the nearest approach to immortality. A good job, skilled abilities, bountiful harvests, possessions; these are goals. There are very finite goals for the happy man in every day of the week, as well as the big goals toward which he directs his efforts. His happiness does not come from the attainment of the goals but from overcoming obstacles on the way to those goals." —L. Ron Hubbard

L. Ron Hubbard
This excerpt was taken from the book, Science of Survival by L. Ron Hubbard.

 

Art and the aesthetic mind...
An article by L. Ron Hubbard, from the book Science of Survival

The more theta*, whether in terms of free theta or entheta, an individual has, the more forceful will be his demonstration of all factors, both analytical and reactive. Because individuals who are very heavily endowed with theta seek to control enormous quantities of MEST* and other organisms, they are fought hard by organisms exercising their own self-determinism. Thus, a person of great theta endowment picks up more numerous and heavier locks and secondaries than persons of smaller endowment. This is not because more theta is there to enturbulate, but because there is more counterattack against the individual. The aesthetic mind, according to theory, attempting to bring about art forms, uses all the theta.

It was once thought that it was absolutely necessary for an artist to be neurotic. Lacking the ability to do anything about neurosis, like Aesop's fox* who had no tail and tried to persuade the other foxes to cut theirs off, old schools of mental healing glorified what they could not prevent or cure. Silly little books on the subject of how fortunate was the crazy person were offered in this justification of this defeatism and helplessness.

Aesthetics and the postulate that there exists an aesthetic mind are both highly nebulous so far as our present understanding of them is concerned. But this is known, that any creative artist, as he descends down the Tone Scale, becomes less and less able to execute creative impulses and at last becomes unable to contact his creative impulses. By Dianetic processing, we take a currently successful but heavily aberrated artist and we bring him up the Tone Scale. We can observe that his ability to execute what he conceives and the clarity with which he conceives it both increase very markedly. His aesthetic ideas do not become more conservative or humdrum but may become wider and more complex. He becomes more himself and better able to do what he can do in the field of aesthetics. The only modification of this is that as he rises up the Tone Scale, he adopts greater scope and robustness in his work. The art form with which he is working and his method of handling it might have demonstrated considerable aberration, as measured by the casual observer. His paintings might have been strange and creepy, or his music hauntingly morbid. His art form, as he rises up the Tone Scale, evidently alters little except to increase in force of execution and deftness of communication. The morbidity in his music, if it did not depend on how sad he was personally with life, does not disappear. But as he rises on the Tone Scale, he is no longer fixed at a position where he must paint strange and creepy paintings or write morbid music. His versatility increases. The author who can write only one book of one kind with one tone is not, frankly, much of an author.

Almost any artist laughs himself into a very short breath over the fumblings and mumblings of the various split schools of mental healing when they confront aesthetics. Some of them even dare to assume that they can judge the mental state of an author by reviewing his writings. This is somewhat on the order of a snail giving his opinion of the Parthenon by crawling through its reliefs. As an illustration, any able composer or author can write in many aesthetic forms and can approximate with their work any level of the Tone Scale. No artist attempting to interpret life is worthy of being called an artist unless he can view almost in the same sweep both apathy and exhilaration. A good poet can cheerfully write a poem gruesome enough to make strong men cringe, or he can write verses happy enough to make the weeping laugh. Any able composer can write music either covert enough to make the sadist wriggle with delight or open enough to rejoice the greatest souls. The artist works with life and with universes. He can deal with any level of communication. He can create any reality. He can enhance or inhibit any affinity. The aesthetics have very much to do with the Tone Scale and with the interweaving of the various dynamics and urges along these dynamics into harmonious patterns random enough and artful enough to accomplish what the artist intends to accomplish. The artist has an enormous role in the enhancement of today's and the creation of tomorrow's reality. He operates in a rank in advance of science as to the necessities and requirements of man. The elevation of a culture can be measured directly by the numbers of its people working in the field of aesthetics. A society which in any way inhibits, suppresses or regiments its artists is a society not only low on the Tone Scale but most certainly doomed. A totalitarian state, following its usual line of perversion of truth, talks endlessly and raucously about its subsidization of the artist. But it subsidizes only those artists who are willing to work for the state exactly as the state dictates. It regiments the artist and prescribes what he will do and what he will write and what he will think. This is in direct controversion to the function of the artist in a society. Because the artist deals in future realities, he always seeks improvements or changes in the existing reality. This makes the artist, inevitably and invariably, a rebel against the status quo. The artist, day by day, by postulating the new realities of the future, accomplishes peaceful revolution.

It happens, however, that democracies and other forms of government are prone to overlook the role of the artist in the society. In the United States, for instance, the artist may write one great book or make a great motion picture or compose one great symphony and may achieve, all in a moment, the bulk of the gains of his lifetime. His whole dedication, from childhood, might have been toward the creation of this one great work, and yet democracy, avidly taxing its powerfully creative individuals into nonproduction, snatches from the artist any such fruits of victory and exacts an enormous penalty for the creation of any work of art. One of the greatest single moves which could be made to advance and vitalize a culture such as America would be to free, completely, the artist from all taxes and similar oppressions, and thus attract into the arts the most ambitious and able and invite them to pursue unchecked the creation of all the beauty and glory on which any culture depends if it would have material wealth. The artist injects the theta into the culture, and without that theta the culture becomes reactive.

This dissertation on the function of the artist is given at this place partly because it should be said and partly because the auditor should understand that the impulse to create and construct surmounts the merely rational and reactive fields of reason. Further, the auditor may occasionally have to defend Dianetics against the strange neurosis to the effect that when an artist becomes less neurotic he becomes less able. Some artists, regrettably, have been educated to this belief and so, by this very education, seek to act in their private and public lives in an intensely aberrated fashion in order to prove that they are artists. The education to this effect is such that the auditor can commonly discover some young girl in the field of the arts living like a prostitute in order to convince herself and her friends that she is truly artistic. In the early days of Rome, art was fairly good. The Christian revolted against Roman disregard for human life and slaves. When the Christian revolted he did the reactive computation that he was revolting against Romans. He condemned everything that was Roman as bad, and for fifteen hundred years it was an evil thing to take a bath, because the Romans had bathed. Unfortunately, although the Catholic church recovered early and began to appreciate the artist, this was not true of some of the early religions which came to America. These were still in full revolt against anything that was Roman. They revolted against pleasure, against beauty, against cleanliness and against many other desirable things which are in themselves the glory of man. The artist then revolted against this declared unreasonableness and went on a course as thoroughly reactive as had been the course of Puritanism and Calvinism. Being artistic was commonly identified with being loose-moraled, wicked, idle and drunken, and the artist, to be recognized, tried to live up to this role. This feeling persists to this day and low-tone people often embrace the arts solely as an excuse to be promiscuous, unconventional and loose in morals....

The whole field of arts is thus enturbulated, and the artistry of a culture is thereby greatly reduced. The rehabilitation of that art-ability of a culture is a tremendously valid undertaking, and will repay a culture a thousand times over for any effort made in that direction. A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.

Aesop's fox: a reference to the fox in the fable The Fox Without a Tail, written by legendary Greek author, Aesop. The fable tells of a fox who gets caught in a trap. Unable to get out, he resolves to bite off his tail to free himself. Shortly thereafter, realizing how odd he looks without a tail, he decides to convince the other foxes of the virtues of being tailless and persuade them to get rid of their own. The other foxes see through this and his plan fails.

Theta: thought, potentially independent of a material vessel or medium. Life force. Èlan vital.

MEST: matter, energy, space and time. The physical universe.

Click here to order Science of Survival by L. Ron Hubbard.

 
What do you want to know about people?

How honest they are, how truthful, their courage level, their ability to handle responsibility? You want to know when someone says, “I love you,” whether or not they mean it. There’s a lot you need to know about people.

Your success tomorrow is as good as you can predict another's Tone Level and human behavior today. And when you read Science of Survival, by L. Ron Hubbard, you’ll know it.

In Science of Survival, you’re gaining the greatest discoveries on human behavior ever written. The fantastic workability of Dianetics made possible the breakthroughs in this book. Written the year following the release of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, L. Ron Hubbard urgently began writing the second book of Dianetics because so many more advances were being discovered. They’re all here in Science of Survival.

The core essence of these breakthroughs are instantly available to you in the columns of the famous Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation. A copy of the chart comes with the book, and nowhere else will you find as much useful information as on this chart. As Mr. Hubbard said himself about the chart:

"This chart can also be used in employing people or in choosing partners. It is an accurate index of what to expect and gives you a chance to predict what people will do before you have any great experience with them." L. Ron Hubbard

Science of Survival will change the way you look at life and the world around you. Here are the natural laws that predetermine how long and how well a person will survive. Understand these and you will understand people at a level you never thought possible. And that can enrich your life immeasurably.

And, for the first time, you can purchase the Science of Survival package, including the hardcover book, four lectures and a home study course! All for a 30% discount off the retail price (normally $105.00, you can purchase it now for $75.00)!

Don't wait to really understand people and accurately predict what they'll do. Get your Science of Survival package now!

 
The attainment of happiness...
video success story Art and the aesthetic mind...
What do you want to know about people?

 

Can you accurately predict human behavior?

Science of Survival

Science of Survival Book, Lecture and Home Study Course Package

Introducing Science of Survival by international bestselling author L. Ron Hubbard. This book and home study course package answers every question you ever had about people. Within these pages you will find your friends, your associates, your family and even yourself.

This book contains the first accurate prediction of human behavior and it will change the way you look at life and the world around you.

This package includes:

  • The beautifully embossed hardcover 50th Anniversary Edition. Packed with over 600 pages of detailed information covering every aspect of human behavior.
  • Four lecture cassettes by the author himself, detailing how you can use this information in day-to-day life.
  • Home Study Course manual that takes you through the entire program and lets you send in your lessons and get them graded by a professional Home Study Course Consultant for FREE.
  • Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation. At the heart of this program is the time-tested chart where you can place anyone at a glance. From isolating just one personality trait, you can instantly predict their actions and behavior.
  • Booklet on Marriage and how to handle relationships and two rules for happy living with your partner.

Click here to order the Science of Survival Package.

 


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