Lecture: Not-Know
Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1961, 15 June
Document title: Not-Know
Document type: lecture transcript
Event: Saint Hill Special Briefing Course
Location: East Grinstead, Sussex
Document ID: 6106C15
Description: Hubbard discusses the deterioration of religion, the philosophy of General Semantics, and the philosophy of the Tone Scale.
You see, most philosophy has deteriorated to some kind of a yip-yap agreement with what they have already got. This is a natural impulse, because all you had to do was open a book of the compound philosophies of the ages that is in the library. And you take it down from the library shelf and look for a copy of it where book markers have been at work. And you will find the most fantastic banalities underscored.
Here’s a perfect gem of wisdom sitting there. But do they underscore that, you see? Oh, no, they will underscore something heavily, you see, with marks in the margins and notes over here, “God is love.”
And you say, “Come off of it, man!”
And you read on both sides of this, it proves conclusively that the guy, actually, is talking about the fact that religion divides itself up into love and hate. And the phrase “God is love” has gotten into a compound sentence. And it says, “In most countries, the more inane religions subscribed to by the very weak pronounce the theory ‘God is love.’ Whereas, anybody on a casual inspection could demonstrate that if a god is love and yet keeps hitting people with lightning bolts, it couldn’t possibly be a mono-theoristic religion.”
And this book marker has read that whole thing, and he’s gone right into the middle of it, and he’s underscored “God is love.” And then he’s put over in the margin, “This is certainly true!”
Man, I’m telling you, ladies and gentlemen, your postulates and operations on the whole track really stick in the philosophic line! It’s a great compliment to your ability to make a postulate stick.
Well anyhow, as you come up the line and look all this over, you get into an interesting frame of mind about this sort of thing. You’re liable to get into this kind of a frame of mind: The truth is a subjective phenomenon and only exists as a subjective phenomenon, and there is no broad or agreed-upon truth or anything.
You have the philosophy of the only-one: General Semantics. See? General Semantics.
They’ve gotten it down to the fact, not only is there no truth, but there is no meaning. And nobody can talk to anybody because everybody means something different by everything that is said. Well, they might have trouble talking to people, but-I tell you, I don’t! So there must be something wrong with their theory. All you’ve got to find is one wild variable on their theory, of course, and it blows up, and that’s me.
I don’t have any trouble talking to people. I don’t have any trouble getting them to find out what I mean, either. And I don’t have the least bit of trouble finding out what they mean. I may ask them three times, and they may practically blow their stacks and figure out that I must be the most stupid guy they have ever met, but I eventually find out what they mean. See? And I’m not out of communication, even if general semanticists are, see? There are all these levels. Failed communicate . . we’ve got it with us.
We have one philosophy on the Tone Scale, totally built out of one level on the Tone Scale: 1.1-ism. It’s . . was brought forward by the fellow of the name of Dale Carnegie1. It’s how to be a successful 1.1. Read him if you don’t think so.
Hubbard, L. R. (1961, 15 June). Not-Know. Saint Hill Special Briefing Course, (6106C15). Lecture conducted from East Grinstead, Sussex.
Notes
- Wikipedia: Dale Carnegie ↩