I was looking at L. Ron Hubbard's past and I thought about the meaning of
perfection while playing a role in a game. 

I thought about what the absolute best identity would be like and what it
would bring about.  

Ideally LRH should have been a handsome man, which would draw potential
followers to him, kind of like John Travolta, Tom Cruise, or Werner Earhard.  

He should have been intelligent enough to have completed courses in college
with flying colors and then went on to earn a Ph.D. or two - the hard way
that is.  

He should have had complete control over his temper.  He should have been a
non-smoker.  He should not have ever used or needed to use profanities.  

He should have been a frequent guest of celebrity talk shows and magazine
interviews.  He should have been at least as popular as Elvis Presley,
visibly hobnobbing with the high and the mighty, the best and the brightest.
He should have been a highly regarded celebrity with a stature not less than
that of Michael Gorbachev or Jacques Cousteau (sorry, ditto-heads), Nelson
Mandela, or Pope John Paul II.

He should have had perfect immunity to diseases. He should have been able to
keep his body around till long after 100 years of age, if only to impress
his would-be followers.

And he should have started the perfect church that everybody would be
waiting in line to take part in, which would be a roaring success.  

All that didn't happen.  If he had all the powers OTs are purported to have,
he should have been able to make it happen.  One has to wonder why he didn't
even come close.

Could it be that in perfection there is imperfection; and that in
imperfection there is perfection?  Could it be that what we perceive as
perfection is only folly when seen at a higher level?  

One reason why a chess grandmaster appears so brilliant and is able to win
all his games at chess is because he is willing to make the sacrifices
necessary to bring about the stated goal - which is winning the game.  This
takes sublimation of urges to attack or show off, boring looking moves,
sacrifices of pieces, and other "uglinesses" as perceived by the amateurs.
All this comes from the years of dedicated study and practice of the game.

In second guessing LRH we can make the mistake of thinking that we're
viewing the game from the same level he viewed it from.  

Suppose he and his game WERE the very model of perfection from a typical
humanoid viewpoint.  What would the scenario been like then?  

Would David Mayo have taken the initiative to break off from the church and
take a large portion of the membership along with him?  Quite unlikely.

Would we as followers be innovative, creative and free, or would we be
slaves in awe of someone whom we could never dare compare ourselves to?  And
would he in turn have become a slave to those who would have depended so
heavily on his "perfect" viewpoint?  To think that anything we come up with
would always fall short of perfection would be absolutely stifling to
individual creative thought.  LRH alluded to that when he talked about a
society called the Galactic Confederation which he said that after billions
of years in existence had already invented anything and everything that
could possibly be of any use to anyone, and the higher-ups wouldn't pay any
attention to an individual's innovations because they could adequately
demonstrate that something better had already been made long ago and was
already obsolete.  

Would we have the the multi-dimentional, creative people influencing all
walks of life in various ways, or would we have a one-dimensional
superchurch dictating how to think perfectly and act perfectly and do only
what is in our best interest lest we fall off the path of righteousness.
Would the weight of such vast agreement be a doorway to greater opportunity,
or would it be like a dark star that would engulf all self determinism and
stifle any creativity or diversity that might come along?  

In asking why LRH acted the way we did and why he didn't act more in our
best interest, we are asking for more other-determinism.  Maybe we didn't
need a fire to be set for us.  Maybe we only needed a spark so we could
light our own fires.  Maybe the wisest move was not to be so wise but to
allow us the incentive to find our own wisdom.  

Maybe perfection is only a cloud, appearing solid and filled with well
defined shapes from a distance, only to vanish in an amorphous mist as it is
approached.  Maybe perfection is only such an illusion, at least on a
physical plane within a physical universe game.  


Robert