From International Viewpoints (IVy) Issue 9 - November 1992
 
Kemp's Column
By Raymond Kemp, USA

Significances and Systems versus Data

It would be nice, I feel, if these columns in "Ivy" drew a response, 
which could be handled in a letters column. I may be drawing down some 
unwanted variants to my viewpoints as expressed, (after all, so few of 
us are perfect), but good healthy debate is stimulating.

Having said that, and being in the middle of the quadrennial insanity 
called the Presidential Elections, I have to say that in general it 
would seem that most Americans do not know how to debate anyway, 
usually resorting to name calling and mud slinging rather than getting 
down to specific issues.

One interesting observation is the Perot phenomenon. He has been 
scorned all over the media as a quitter, for backing out of the 
"Race", yet the facts are, that he not only never declared himself a 
candidate for the office, he stated categorically that he would only 
consider it, if he were placed on the ballot in all 50 states. This 
only was completed in September, three months after he was accused of 
quitting. As I write he now states that he will poll his supporters, 
and if they say run, he will.

Acceptance of comm.

I am not espousing pro or con politically, but what we see here is a 
phenomenon that is universal. People in general can not accept what 
another person says, they can only accept what -they- feel is the -
significance- of what someone says.

Ron had the same difficulty. He was accused of creating -jargon-, by 
the people who had their own jargon and much of the general criticism 
was brought about by his own staff, who set up policy based on what 
they stated LRH said. The whole subject of disconnection, is a case in 
point. As actually intended, it is a powerful tool, provided one 
understands what it is one is disconnecting from. Pam Kemp was 
probably the first person to actually pull that mess apart, and put it 
back together again into a tremendously workable piece of technology 
(see "You Live as You Think"). (See also "IVy" no 4 Dec 1992, page 6 
and 7.) She also did the same thing for LRH on the Drug Rundown which 
prior to her write up, which came out as an HCOB, people were ordered 
to cold turkey (Abruptly and without aid such as vitamins.> quit -
before- they could be handled.

In a recent "Ivy", Otto Roos jolted me into a greater understanding of 
the Organizing board, by supplying the data on the correlation between 
the levels of the Divisional system and the Factors.

Data important

My point is, that it is the -data- that leads to understanding, not 
the significance of the date, or even the information (two different 
things), that needs to be understood fully. If one only "cognites" on 
the significance, then there is no real expansion of knowledge.

One of the most difficult course put out by LRH was the Data Course, 
the Logic course, the Data Evaluation course .. call it what you will. 
Ron once said to me, and I assumed at the time that he was joking, but 
now I am not so sure. "This course will either drive students totally 
sane, or make them more insane, and I am not sure which".

Observably it was not, and, even now, is not a popular course.

I wonder how many people realize that you can take any lecture by LRH, 
and evaluate it, and discover that he spent 50 minutes of an hour 
lecture talking about a situation and endeavoring to explain it in as 
many ways as possible, before spending the last ten minutes on laying 
out the Tech to handle. Yet a majority of the students only remember 
the "process" or the "run down".

There was a recent period when a SHSBC student did not even have to 
listen to the "2,000 Hours" of lecture unedited ... what a waste of 
gold! Fortunately I understand that students now read transcripts, (I 
hope unedited) and listen to the tapes.

Japan's "secret"

We have all become aware of Japan's rise in the economic world 
village, and of their immense success in manufacturing and marketing 
of superior quality products, yet little notice has been taken as to 
how this arose. Usually it has been explained away by such things 
(significance) as "Low Wages, cheap labor, and so on".

Factually, in 1950, an American was invited to Japan to re-organize 
Japans industrial procedures, and he threw out the "Everybody Knows", 
and instituted a system called Total Quality Management. Among other 
things he threw out exhortations to work harder, he cancelled 
inspection as a way to obtain quality, and he removed any idea of 
annual performance evaluations. He then went on to insist that the 
worker was never at fault when errors arose, but the system was poor 
in that it allowed an error to occur and go undetected. He also 
insisted that -profit- could only come from continuous improvement in 
-quality-.

Now there is an interesting parallel, in that if you look at the 
Policy of the Church organization, you see immediately where they are 
headed as an eventuality, but if you read or listen to the -data- that 
LRH put out, you discover that he was saying exactly the same thing, 
and in many cases what he said is in direct opposition to what is 
done.

A quick two examples. He said that dissatisfied public should be 
refunded without delay. He said that the way to handle entheta was not 
to attack it but to place so much theta on the line that the entheta 
would blow off.

Data and significance

Somehow these, and many other things became turned around in their 
application. How and why, is a matter of interesting conjecture, but 
is in the realm of -significance-. The data remains the same.

So what is more important, the -significance-, the label, the name of 
the system, or the actual simple data, that it is possible for people 
to get better and expand?

What is the most important, the -naming-, and defending of a system 
name, or the striving for continuous improvement of the product, in 
our case happier and saner people who openly communicate?