Contagion of Aberration

It starts well ... "Disease is contagious. Germs, travelling from one individual to another, wander through an entire society, respecting none until stopped by such things as sulfa or penicillin"

Then, it makes another unfounded statement .. "Aberration are contagious. Like germs they respect none and carry forward from individual to individual, from parents to child, respecting none until they re stopped by dianetics."

As children, part of our education is on the conditions of germs, we learn about penicillin; this is text book stuff. The first paragraph is automatically supported by the knowledge that the reader will probably already have and trust. The second paragraph, however, has no such automatic support and to this point in the book there is still no firm detail or proof of how dianetics is supposed to achieve this. If I was being cynical, I would believe that there is a concious attempt for the credibility of the first paragraph to be used to support the (to this point) unfounded assertions of the second.

The contagion of aberrations requires thought. On page 61 we receive the definition of an aberration - "Aberrations, under which is included all deranged or irrational behaviour, are caused by engrams. They are stimulus-response, pro- and contrasurvival." Thus from the readings to this point it can only be concluded that an aberration is not, in itself, contagious. Rather, the engram in an individual causes aberrations which affect a persons behaviour and this behaviour then causes engrams to be created in others and these engrams create aberrations in the, "infected," individual. That makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is the definition of an engram also on 61 that states, "The engram is the single source of aberrations and psychosomatic ills. Moments of 'unconsciousness' where the analytical mind is attenuated in greater or lesser degree are the only moments when engrams can be received"

It doesn't make sense until you evaluate that a moment of "unconsciousness" isn't actually being flat out on an operating theatre table; back to page 61 we go ... "Moments of 'unconsciousness' when the analytical mind is attenuated in greater or lesser degree, are the only moments when engrams can be received."

So, if you were angry for some reason and bump in to me, then the actual result of this on me will be that if my guard is down, I could also become angry at being treated in that way. If I were aware of the boundaries I might thus be angry with you, but I wouldn't carry that anger forward in my dealings with others; I would keep it in its place.

I think I'm getting the hang of this.

So when statements come along the likes of, "But it does mean that it is utterly inevitable that aberrated parents will in some way aberrate their children" what it means is that aberrated parents will cause engrams in their children. Why were the words messed up here?

There comes a problem with the following, however, "If some society believed that fish-eating brought on leprosy it is quite certain that this false datum would find its way into engrams and sooner or later someone would develop a leprosy-like disease after having eaten fish."

Much of society has continued on the basis of data. I believe I might have penned before on the fact that much of mans history and discoveries have, through the ages, been disproven and replaced on a number of occasions. We also have the realms of positive reinforcement cloudying the water here ... one person performing remote reiki on peoples pets believing that it works; the partner asks about the pets that died but this being brushed off by the individual, using only the cases where the animals recovered as proof that reiki worked to reinforce their own belief that reiki works.

The critical thing here is that the power of the mind in affecting the body is still, at this point, in the realms of anecdotal evidence as we still have no scientific research to back this up. Maintaining a good sense of self and being able to maintain a focus on reality is the purpose of many other, and in some cases many times older, teachings. Dianetics doesn't actually have a monopoly on this result. One of my favourites is, "Lack of planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on mine." which is again demonstrating the barrier between one person having issues and not letting them affect me.

The issue of the false datum about fish does not answer the questions of how many per head of population would be affected. Also, how many would only believe that they had the disease and that that they had symptoms, but actually have no disease or demonstratable symptoms of any relation in physical reality?

Unfortunately, the book takes another odd turn, "Primitive societies, being subject to much mailing by the elements, have many more occasions for injury than civilised societies. Further, such primitive societies are alive with false data. Further, their practice of medicine and mental healing is on a very aberrative level by itself."

To any society, including ours, data is only as true as we have the proof and evidence to substantiate the claims. Once the proof and evidence is up to a certain high standard it is said to be scientific proof. This is something which the book itself has failed to produce.

The practices of medicines in primitive societies tends to be of the earth. Even our advanced society has found itself turning against our own synthetic concoctions for the more mundane infections and are returning to solutions which come from nature. True, a primitive society won't have a sterilised surgical environment and anaesthetics, and thus one of their tribe suffering a bad mauling or badly broken leg, will have a low chance of survival.

As to how false data involves in this, however, I am not so sure. Also in our modern society with car accidents, kitchen knife accidents, fire hazards, chemical burns, aircraft safety and all the rest of it; I actually believe that if we call it by the numbers, the primitive societies have it better in terms of accidents suffered.

It could easily be taken, therefore, that primitive societies even though they have false data; don't know that this data is false and therefore continue on because their belief in the data being true results in no engrams and thus no aberrations as a result of this belief. Similarly, if we conclude that our own society has progressed from that path but that there are still things we do not know, then our own advanced society is actually in that very stage ourselves ... our problem is that we don't know that the false data is ... in fact ... false. Therefore we consider ourselves to be unaberrated. It it only when we later recognise data as being false that we can suffer aberrations as a result.

Sadly, the book further degenerates in to colourful examples, but these lead to something which I regard as a philosophical gem...

"A society which practices punishment of any kind against any of its members is carrying on a contagion of aberration. The society has a social engram, society size, which says punishment is necessary. Punishment is meted. The jails and institutions full. And then one day some portion of the society, depressed in to zone 1 by a government's freedom with government engrams, jumps up and wipes the government out. And a new set of aberrations is formed from the violence attending the destruction. Violent revolutions never win because they begin this cycle of aberration. A society filled with aberees may feel it necessary to punish. There has been no remedy other than punishment. The provision of a remedy for unsocial conduct by members of the group is of more than passing interest to a government for a continuance of its own corporal practices; adding these to the continuing aberrations of the past seriously depresses the survival potential of that government and will someday cause that government to fall. After many governments so fall, its people, too, perish from this Earth."

To a fair degree, it is just like reading Ghandi all over again, only in different words. This is not new thought process here ... but it is symbolic and very telling of the state of the human being, that despite this recognisable knowledge and proof existing of its practice ... that society continues to follow the path of violence and dismisses any non-violent solutions because they do not have the same entertainment value that violence carries.

The chapter finished by focusing on a clear person doing something that needs to be done; indeed what is written appears to rely on a clear having such a nature of person. However, even if there was a planet full of cleared people who would naturally behave in such a manner, there are plenty of other elements on the planet which are perfectly easily capable of entering engrams in to the clear. I have already commented on how difficult it is for the clear to remain so. It only takes a bad hair day and that is the end of that. We are human.

As of yet, there is nothing presented which takes account of that, rather unfortunate, fact.