Our most valuable asset

This was written in 1955 by LRH. Unfortunately, since then our groups, ourselves and the World have changed considerably, not so much for the better. Much has happened in the last 65 years, and many of us have experienced the good, the bad and the ugly of those years!

In almost all situations, school, your group, the army or the office where someone has some power and authority over you they will use “toughness” to handle you. Shouting is confused as using “good intention” to get their point across. Life on this Planet today is by no means easy. The handling of people has a great deal of confusion surrounding it.

It would do us all well to duplicate what LRH is stating below …

“The most valuable asset we have, actually, is our ability to understand, to do the right thing, to be kind, to be decent.

“Amongst us we have occasionally the feeling like: life requires that we be stern, life requires that we be ornery enough and mean enough to fire him; life requires that we’ve got to tell this preclear the next time we come that she must go, she must leave, she must never darken our door again. Life requires that. We must be stern, we must be mean, we must occasionally be ornery, and we must steel ourselves to take an unkind action. And we feel sometimes there’s something wanting in us, because we refuse to take this unkind action.

We feel we are being cowardly, that we are ducking back from our responsibilities. We feel the best way to solve the thing would be to be a little bit mean about it. Get the idea? We should be able to be tough…

“And so our kind impulse is muffled by the fact that we “know” we had certainly better tell this person off…

“Well, I hate to unsettle a very stable datum, if it does unsettle it. But the only way anything ever does resolve is by letting your own kind heart reach through. That’s the only way it ever does solve.

“And it never solves by being tough. And believe me, ladies and gentlemen, here talks a guy who in college days was a top sergeant of the reserve marines, who drilled battalions. And when I tell you that it doesn’t pay to be tough, I’ve had experience.                      

“An officer in the war, and I can tell you that at no time, at no time during the entire war, did I ever see toughness win either in the field of discipline, the field of efficiency, or the field of getting a job done. I have never seen it win.

“There is no substitute for liking people like liking people. There’s no substitute for reality like reality. There’s no substitute for communication like communication with good affinity and good reality. And that’s really close to a static. Do you understand?

“You go down scale from that you get into Dale Carnegieism. You ought to read that book sometime; it’s a real killer. It’s how to subvert ARC.

“All right. What do we have then? What do we have in these organizations? What do we really have of value in the organizations of Scientology?

“The only thing we have of value, actually, is Scientology, an understanding of life, increasing ability to communicate, a good concept and grip on reality, and the ability to like guys. That’s all you got.”
LRH, OEC Tape: “Attitude and Conduct of Scientology”, 3 November 1955

And lastly, this reference from “What is Greatness” is one well to remember…

“It is true that beings are frail and commit wrongs. Man is basically good but can act badly.

He only acts badly when his acts done for order and the safety of others are done with hatred. Or when his disciplines are founded only upon safety for himself regardless of all others; or worse, when he acts only out of a taste for cruelty.

To preserve no order at all is an insane act. One need only look at the possessions and environment of the insane to realize this. The able keep good order. When cruelty in the name of discipline dominates a race, that race has been taught to hate. And that race is doomed.

The real lesson is to learn to love.

He who would walk scatheless through his day must learn this.

Never use what is done to one as a basis for hatred. Never desire revenge.

It requires real strength to love Man; and to love him despite all invitations to do otherwise, all provocations and all reasons why one should not.

Happiness and strength endure only in the absence of hate. To hate alone is the road to disaster. To love is the road to strength. To love in spite of all is the secret of greatness. And may very well be the greatest secret in this universe.”
Taken from an article on Certainty written in 1966 (Tech Vol IV – P 154)