Reviews for The Problems of Work: Scientology Applied to the Workaday World

The average rating for The Problems of Work: Scientology Applied to the Workaday World based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-31 00:00:00 Timothy Evans I liked this book, and even felt jubilant during a couple of its sentences. I respect the author's attempt to answer these questions in such minute detail. Overall, I value the book for the questions the book gave me the chance to ask myself, which otherwise I mightn't have thought of. Interesting points made in the book, which I'm mulling over: Control is a valuable thing in the job setting. It is important to have a boss skilled in "good control" techniques and an employee very receptive to this control. If you are someone who rebels against authority, perhaps it because you failed to be controlled in the past, and thus do not know what true control is. "The doctrine of the stable datum" is the concept that in a complicated world, one can cut through the confusion by remembering the one foundational piece of information you know to be true. If you can remember that piece, you will not have confusion about the other information related to it in your reality. Hubbard's stable datum for the working world, which answers (for him) the question of "Why work at all?" Is this ""fact"" (double air quotes here from me): Work gives purpose to a person's life. He says that if we were unable to work, either not permitted by injury or by government, we would not be happy. Indeed, I find it interesting that he points to child labor laws as a reason for the alienation young people feel, towards the working world, when they finally must work. Having been forbidden from this world their whole lives, they now feel that they don't belong to the world of work. I, as a young person, definitely feel alienated from the world of work, and perhaps this is one reason for it. Hubbard says the timeline of work mirrors the timeline of life. The aspects of life, creation, survival and destruction (in that order), mirror the aspects of work: start, change, stop. Hubbard says some people are better, generally, at starting, changing, or stopping things in their lives, and these patterns affect one's work life. By becoming good at all three we get closer to freedom. He says man must have a game. He says uncontrol is indeed undercontrol. He says things feel unreal when you feel no control over things in your world. He says people end up "abandoning sections of life" after bad experiences, but if we were to truly understand the effects of such experiences on our minds and bodies, we could improve our lives and make our comebacks without fear if we chose to do so. --- I'd sum up this book as "a pretty good try." Hubbard used what he knew and tried to make sense of things. Remember when teachers told us never to go with multiple choice answers with words like "all" every" "always" or "only"? Hubbard writes this way, which is automatically confining. To make blanket statements about reality, in the hope that readers will block out their knowledge of things being different, is unrealistic. A lot of Hubbard's persuasion here seems to be "grow up and get a job, because you need one, everyone else needs one, and everyone else has one." But I feel compelled to counter that with "grow up and work towards observing that reality is more complicated than you say it is," and "maybe there are better ways for us to organize our society that don't kill the planet." Early on, Hubbard states that Scientology is the first Western attempt to fully understand our reality scientifically. The key word for me here is "Western." One must always be striving in Hubbard's world; there is no concept here of "success through inaction," championed by Taoist Lao-Tzu. This would be one of many perspectives worth challenging if one's philosophy is the true philosophy. To say other inflammatory things to readers, such as "if a man has no ability to work, he is as good as dead" is incredibly callous and shallow (but not quite...callow...). The perspective of the whole is never addressed in this book about work, though Hubbard dedicates his book to the people "working themselves to death" for our society, saying the workers are the living pillars undergirding our whole civilization here, and that "they're not just cogs, they are the machine itself." So...is our whole civilization good? What about disabled people? What about WOMEN, doofus? What about the work we must do in our lives that is unpaid? Glad this book was short. Worth a listen if you want new ideas to chew on. dannyfreeblog.blogspot.com

Review # 2 was written on 2015-04-15 00:00:00 Joseph Canestraro This book dramatically changed my life for the good - and I didn't actually think that was possible. I look at life with happiness and excitement, rather than despair. I am enthusiastic about the future, rather than worried about it. I love my fellow man, and understand them, so much more than I thought possible, even when they may seem to act irrationally. I give better advice and am able to help my friends. I am more calm. I am happier. This book just makes so much sense, and I love it!!