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Subj:   IVy: Which came first, the sperm or the ovum?
Date:  19 July 1998 01:11 EDT
From:  PJSpickler@aol.com
Sender: owner-ivy-subscribers@lightlink.com


Dear Friends,
     Being in receipt of some super-fine comments and acknowledgments
concerning my poor offering re: the sperm-ovum sequence, I feel somewhat
compelled (probably by a hidden influence) to take some electrons in hand and
say a few more words as a postscript to said article.  The question of which
came first, the sperm or the ovum, is of course a poor attempt at humor, but I
think I would be on safe ground if we pick up the thread of the human body and
allowing for a limited Darwinian premise, trace its history through time and
space, as something which Ron Hubbard called theta originally enlivened small
colonies of cells and, over the eons, with lots of efforts and counter-efforts
provided by Mother Nature and the universe, in the form of cataclysm and
catastrophe, eventually evolved the princely organism that most of us possess
called Homo sapiens.  

    Now my Latin may fail me at this point, but I think Homo
Sapiens means "Wise man."  Maybe this is not so far off the point, because man
certainly at times is capable of being wise if "wise" is defined as having the
ability  and the willingness to perceive, pose, and resolve problems relating
to personal and extra-dynamic survival.  L. Ron Hubbard, in his most jocular
early moods, in that lovely period between 1950 and perhaps 1955, used to
refer to humankind as "homo sap," and given the shenanigans of the 20th
century, that moniker did not seem too far off the point.  Getting from Homo
sap to Homo sapiens and possibly even Homo novis seemed to be quite a big deal
for Mr. Hubbard, but as you can see, the intention got somewhat fershtunkt
(which I think is a Germano-Yiddish term for goofed up).  One of our favorite
T-shirt slogans goes, "Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of
it" -- well, there seems to be quite a bit of truth to that, and anybody with
even a modest interest in history won't have any trouble finding wonderful
examples of what happens when you take something that's a lot of fun and
organize the hell out of it.

       As for the protoplasmic line that ultimately developed into the human
body, there's all kinds of good books about biological history, and whether
you agree with Darwin or not, he's certainly worth reading in an
understandable form, and Ron, in his book _History of Man, or, What to Audit_,
took what I think is a good shot at giving us some interesting information
about what was called the theta line and the body line, even providing some
data about when the two joined.  

    Now Ron has come under quite a bit of criticism for saying things that 
seemed to suggest a real dualism between theta and the material universe, but if 
you one more time take out your old book of the Scientology Axioms and 
carefully scrape off the two or three inches of dust that you'll find on it, you 
will find somewhere an axiom that goes something like this: "Life is a game 
wherein Theta the Static solves the problems of Theta as MEST."  Be sure and 
word-clear the heck out of that
axiom, and clay demo it a bunch of times until you feel pretty happy with your
demo, whether you agree that it's an axiom or not.  The funny thing about
axioms is that they're supposed to be self-evident truths, but in my deranged
experience, damn few of them are self-evident, at least to human
consciousness. Thanks for being out there and receiving -- I must get back to
the sheep now, as well as counting my alfalfa stems, before I go completely
unconscious.  
    All the best, Phil