Dear Mike:
A couple of days ago I saw a video of you from the Scientology the Aftermath project where you said, obviously quite recently, that you had finally lost your lack of compassion. As you can imagine, this is important to me because it has been your lack of compassion that has allowed you to treat me so contemptuously, so cruelly, so threateningly for so long. It has to have been a lack of compassion that at all times attended your similar treatment of your other wog victims, whom I represent. I have written and published about this many times, and also read, listened, written quite a bit and spoken about compassion.
Losing the lack of compassion at least implies acquiring, or being given, compassion. You said:
I believe that the thing that Scientology takes away from you is compassion. Real compassion for others. And I have tried to cure myself of a lack of compassion.
And I don’t believe that I look at people these days with the same lack of compassion that I did when I was really inside the mindset of Scientology.
I am proceeding with the understanding that you were not being semantically tricky when you said you don’t look at people with the same lack of compassion now that you looked at them with previously. I am aware of Scientologist writers and speakers’ semantic dishonesty and semantic dodges, and wog writers and speakers’ semantic chicanery too, of course. I assume, however, you are not communicating that you still have a lack of compassion but it’s not the same lack of compassion you had earlier. No, I am accepting that you are communicating that you previously lacked compassion and now you no longer have that lack. You are saying you now have compassion, you now are compassionate.
If what you say is true, I will be exceedingly glad, and all your victims from all these decades when you now acknowledge you lacked compassion will be exceedingly glad. I have found your clear lack of compassion cruel, and it will be a joy to experience cruelty’s end.
I have been aware that you have been faking compassion ever since you started communicating publicly. Same with Mark Rathbun. I am sure you would agree you did not try at all to present as an uncompassionate person. You were not compassionate, as your treatment of me alone has shown; but you knew that appearing or sounding compassionate was valuable for your purposes. You have known for more than thirty years what it looked like to fake it, and what words to say to cue your supporters to laud your compassion, your courage or your humanity. You’re trained to fake sincerity and even sobbing. Countless times you did tone scale drills and reporter TRs, and you prepped and drilled media interviews or presentations.
I have known that the acquisition of real compassion is indeed very valuable, probably priceless. It could be the only real spiritual progress man can make, or the only spiritual step he can take. All the spiritual abilities Scientologists buy, sell, and say they’ve gained, only lead to the need for what they withhold, compassion.
Your statement that you have been trying to cure yourself of your lack of compassion indicates you recognize its value and that something can be done about its lack, and you’ve done it.
Almost unbelievably, but certainly paradoxically, this perhaps sole spiritual step seems to require the spirit be broken to take it. It appears to be so vital even hearts are broken and rendered contrite in the uncompassionate before they gain compassion, even people who have not uncompassionately victimized good people for years.
For clarity of discussion, here are definitions from Merriam-Webster definition and Wikipedia:
: deep feeling for and understanding of misery or suffering and the concomitant desire to promote its alleviation : spiritual consciousness of the personal tragedy of another or others and selfless tenderness directed toward it *to have compassion on a person* *with compassion (so different from pity) she shows the sordid impact of this convict settlement on the lives of the natives— Sarah Campion*
synonyms see SYMPATHYCompassion is the response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help.
Compassion motivates people to go out of their way to help physical, spiritual, or emotional hurts or pains of another. Compassion is often regarded as having an emotional aspect to it, though when based on cerebral notions such as fairness, justice and interdependence, it may be considered rational in nature and its application understood as an activity based on sound judgment. There is also an aspect of compassion which regards a quantitative dimension, such that individual’s compassion is often given a property of “depth,” “vigour,” or “passion.” The etymology of “compassion” is Latin, meaning “co-suffering.” More involved than simple empathy, compassion commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another’s suffering.
You are in a particularly biblical situation as a claimed newly compassionate person, because you personally caused the misery, suffering, physical, spiritual, or emotional hurts or pains, unfairnesses and injustices to others. These are not people that someone else, unbeknownst to you, in some other part of the world, caused misery, suffering, hurts, injustices, etc. You and your religious criminal conspiracy, with your psychopathic Suppressive Person doctrine and your criminal fair game policy, and your key role in that conspiracy caused me and people just like me years of misery, injustices, etc. You did it as a job, duty and crusade, and you created it joyfully, winning on post. You took the job of persecuting people and getting others to persecute people, and you kept it despite, you say, fifty to a hundred beatings.
You are also uniquely qualified to best help the persons you have been persecuting. You possess everything necessary – the simple, unadorned, complete truth of your uncompassionate, criminal actions — to alleviate the misery, injustices, etc. you caused and got others to cause.
Notice that compassion brings a person to a point of desiring to help, of desiring to alleviate misery, suffering, hurts, injustices, etc. If you act on such a desire, where you can act, it is kindness. If you don’t act to alleviate the misery, suffering, hurts, injustices that you can alleviate, it is cruelty.
Ever the psychopath, Hubbard, as you know, wrote in scripture that labeling people “Suppressive Persons” “is a kind action.” It actually meant, as you know, that they could be deprived of property or injured by any means, tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed. In psychopathic logic, or, as Hubbard called it, double-curve tech, that is being kind. He did talk about compassion in scripture, and Scientologists and their collaborators promote him as this super compassionate being. So it could be that you are still using that logic, and still calling cruelty kindness, and calling your contempt compassion. I look forward to hearing from you that this is not the case, and you really are compassionate as you say, and as the concept is commonly understood in pre-post-truth dictionaries.
Because compassion is critical as a human ability, because its lack or presence relates imperatively to the Scientology experience, and because of your amazing public claim that you have now gained it, I have been assembling some materials relating to compassion, which I will post separately, perhaps in a series.
I look forward to anything you have to say about compassion in or out of Scientology or its mindset, and especially how your new-found compassion will manifest toward your long term wog victims. I am not pretending blindness to your serving the Miscavigeite Scientologists’ purposes toward your wog victims; in fact, I have written or spoken publicly many times about this. I am very aware that your declaration of compassion could be an item you’ve checked off on a program, and that you have no intention or desire to stop serving the Miscavigeite purposes toward us. But I am also aware that if you really have acquired compassion after your life of uncompassion, which I know is possible, you would also stop serving those purposes. And that I will know when I see it.
Yours sanguinely,
Gerry Armstrong
[address removed]
Cc: Mark Rathbun