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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which is available to all those who subscribe to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
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A fistful of theta, or, odds and ends
5 August 1998
by Phil Spickler

Dear Fellow Subscribers, and your numerous symbiotes,

I am extremely pleased to report (actually, somewhat embarassed to  say)
that, having whined and complained about the seeming quiet of
communication, a fairly large number of responses occurred to my miserable
and somewhat stunted mini-essay on the very unpopular subject of
admiration.   I too have fallen victim to the idea, and wish to send gobs
of acknowledgment  and admiration to those who replied.  The replies were
most gratifying, and my  fellow geniuses were liberal with their use of
humor and insight -- in fact,  some of the brightest seemed to be saying
that they had had the realization  that making the Church of Scientology
(or the Cof$, or that Evil Empire, or  whatever Ron's creation is being
called these days) a portion of their case through the unwillingness to
acknowledge and admire this horrific creation is truly an unnecessary
burden.  Think of all the wonderful and amazing things that one might
decide to have as one's case, the multitude of things that are far more
worthy of being detested, not-ised, made big and solid and completely
other-determined that one could assign as being part of one's case, and it
becomes easy to see that the Cof$ doesn't measure up very high in the
pantheon of aberrations.

Yes, acknowledgment, admiration, seem like things we just don't want to
give to the poor old Cof$, even though like any bad child it desperately
wants love and admiration and acknowledgment.  You say, "But how can one
acknowledge and admire such a vile creation?"  It's easy -- just admire it
for  what it's actually being at this time, 'cause believe you me, it's
taking a massive effort and a lot of hard work on the part of a fair number
of beings to keep such a claptrap collection of evil and stupidity mocked
up and persistent in the face of the fact that the interior ideal of the
philosophy  that it purports to represent has the power to as-is the whole
thing in a  flash, or cause it to vanish. However, if you're scarce on
opponents and you  want to make the Church of Scientology a lttle more
solid and a little more  stupid and a little more evil, you can of course
continue to withhold  acknowledgment and admiration.  Let's face it, we're
old hands at doing that, and as long as the fear of nothingness hangs
heavily over our poor heads, admiration will remain an unpopular activity.


I've never seen it written (thank goodness), but admiration probably  has
some kind of a scale, which at the bottom might be the absolute opposite
or complete negation of the idea of admiration, up through various
gradients of approval and acknowledgment, finally reaching into the
stratospheric possibilities of so fully perceiving the as-is-ness of
something so as to cause its vanishment by the highest form of admiration,
which would be of  course perfect duplication.  So it would seem that as
sources of admiration, which I think has as one of its synonyms
acknowledgment, folks might find themselves somewhere on this scale when it
comes to producing, creating,  admiration and all the possible flows of it.
Can one's ability to create and flow admiration be improved?  You betcha!
You can start working all the gradients on all the flows imaginable, and in
no time at all you'll be receiving a platinum certificate from your nearest
Admirology Center that says  something like "WOW!"  And then when you go to
put it up on the wall or cash  it in at the bank it disappears.  Now that's
my idea of a fun organization -- every time you try to find the damned
thing, it disappears.  Or if you do locate it, it's like quantum physics,
you can't tell how fast it's going.   Anyhow, if you want to test your
skills in this matter, you can start by  seeing if you can find some
acknowledgment or admiration for this large chunk of drivel that I'm
sending your way.  In closing, I should like to once again thank those who
communicated, as I drag my bent form across the rough rocks of time, place,
form and event and once again close the handcrafted mahogany  doors of my
high-tech cave and drift off into the Land of Nod while wondering  if
androids do count electric sheep.  Good night -- Phil (or was that Phil
Dick?)

P.S.  Phil Dick, for those of you that have the 1950's as whole track, was
a  rather fine author of science fiction who wrote once a book that said
something in its title about androids and electric sheep.  Good night again
-- P