User:Justanother

This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Justanother.

Justanother is currently wikibonked and is operating at a lower edit level than usual. Hitting the wall is a temporary condition, and the user should return to normal edit levels in time.

Room enough at the inn - Click play on "God Is In" here.

The Zen of edit counts

A novice was once curious about the nature of the Edit Count. He approached the Zen master and asked, "Zen master, what is the nature of the Edit Count?" "The Edit Count is as a road," replied the Zen master. "You must travel the road to reach your destination, and some may travel longer roads than others. But do not judge the person at your door by the length of the road he has travelled to reach you." And the novice was Enlightened

The above is from http://tools.wikimedia.de/~river/cgi-bin/count_edits

Or as we say in the workaday world. "Does he have 20 years of experience or one year of experience 20 times over?"

About me

You will perhaps forgive me if I do not say too much "About me". I enjoy the anonymity I have here and am not anxious to "out" myself. This has to do with my stand on Scientology, you see. I edit from what I call a "Scientology-sympathetic" viewpoint. However, I also understand where most critics are coming from and do not oppose their right to criticize the Church of Scientology. The Scientology Ethics Officer would likely say that I was in a Condition of Doubt or lower; the Scientology critic would likely say that I am "still brainwashed". I would deny both claims, but that is only to be expected. Since extremists on both sides are guilty of bone-headed acts against even moderate individuals on the other side, I will remain justanother - just another editor. Oh, I should mention that I most certainly do not the divide the universe into pro- and anti-Scientologist; I do not even divide the editors working on the Scientology articles here that way; I only put people in those categories that seem to so tightly hold their own POV that they cannot conceive that the other might have some validity too. I would say that they know who they are but, in actual fact, I doubt that they do.

While I imagine I will edit mostly in the Scientology series, as a character in my favorite CRPG says, "I know a lot of general information about a lot of specific things" so there is no telling where I might pop up.

How I edit

Basically, I edit to add my own perspective to the articles. Some might call that POV but I counter that we can ONLY edit from our own perspective. It is where we are, our point of view, the point we view things from. What is really the issue is that we present our perspective in a fair and verifiable fashion and do not deny others the same right.

Let me expand; If you come to an article and it is just how you would write it, has all the elements you think are important, with the proper amount of importance assigned to each, no extraneous elements, then you would find little to edit there - it is already correct and complete from your perspective. If it is controversial subject but you felt the opposing side(s) to be fairly presented in accordance with wikipedia fundamental policies then you might be pretty satisfied overall. IMO, we edit articles because they are not already complete and correct from our perspective and/or the opposing side(s) are not, in our estimation, presented fairly or in accordance with wikipedia policy. I find many articles in the Scientology series that, based on the above, I feel that I can contribute to. I do not imply that my edits are the be all and the end all; I simply state that I have something to contribute.

For inclusion in wikipedia, our perspective must be a shared perspective and must be verifiable in each particular. The arrangement and choice of what verifiable material to include is where we get to contribute our understanding to the article; we do not get to use loaded terms that specifically add our own interpretation. We cannot describe something as bad or good or anything else. We can report that a reputable source either stated that or quoted someone else stating that. The terms that we contribute must be neutral.

You might also say that we edit from our understanding of the subject. That understanding may be imperfect but often we improve it during the process of editing, an example of what the Scientologist calls the KRC triangle, the link between Knowledge, Responsibility, and Control. Once we decide to take responsibility for an article and start to control the mechanical process of editing, our knowledge increases, which leads to better control of our tools and research, more knowledge, a higher willingness to take responsibility. The Scientologist knows that they are linked and by increasing any one, you increase all three. That is cool because it means that you can enter at any point. You may start with knowledge; you read an article, decide you would like to know a bit more and research it a bit, then edit the article (responsiblity and control). Likewise you can enter at the point of control, perhaps making a minor edit not particularly related to the content of the article.

I'm not sure if the above is "How I Edit" or "Why I Edit". As to the latter, I also find that editing here is therapeutic in that it helps me to put my long experience in and with Scientology into perspective and moves me more toward my "center". It helps me look beyond my upsets and toward the truth and workability of Scientology that I enjoy most about the subject. I know of no other philosophy that so accurately models the world of human experience. It is a very useful tool to have, indeed.

I also find editing in wikipedia holds excellent lessons for life. I am sure that others have formed the same opinion. It is kinda like those "Everything I Learned in Life" themes such as "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned in Kindergarden", "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned From My Dog", or the ever-popular "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek". I am sure we will someday see the book "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned Editing Wikipedia".

What about Scientology

Scientology is a philosophy. In its broadest sense as envisioned by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology would be essentially the same thing as metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of Life, the Universe and Everything. Since it deals with man as a spirit, comprises a community of "like-thinkers", and has shared morals codes and practices, it is what is commonly termed a religion, at least for members of the formal Church of Scientology. Many rational and intelligent people subscribe to the beliefs of Scientology. The core belief being that you are a spiritual being called a thetan that inhabits a body and has and uses a mind. No-one says that Hubbard invented this idea, what Hubbard did was attempt to determine if there were underlying laws to the nature and behavior of spiritual beings, akin to the laws of the physical universe, for example the laws that control bodies in motion. He came up with sets of basic laws that he termed the "Factors" and the "Axioms". Hubbard also attempted to develop techniques based on these laws that would improve the state of the thetan. He termed this entire body of work, Scientology. No-one claims that Hubbard created Scientology in a vacuum, out of whole cloth as it were. He researched many, many previous philosophies and took what he could from them. People should not point at some similarity between Scientology and some earlier philosophy and say "Hubbard copied this". That is like pointing at Einstein and saying "Oh look, he copied Newton".

If one wants to approach Scientology intelligently as an editor of articles describing the philosophy and practice of Scientology (as opposed to articles describing the controversies associated with the Church of Scientology, which require a different knowledge-set), it is important to understand something about metaphysics or religion and science. Science, as commonly described, is a subset of metaphysics. Science, especially natural science (which includes physics and biology), deals with things that can be measured with physical instruments. Things that cannot be measured, love for instance (as distinct from the effects of love on the physical body which can be measured), are beyond the scope of science. Those individuals that understand science best, men like Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, understand this point and know the limitations of science. If there is an "ultimate reality", that reality likely lies at the intersection of the physical and the spiritual; The Tao of Physics explores that idea and the author found agreement from two more giants of the physical sciences, Heisenberg and Bohr. People that do not have that depth of understanding sometime mistakenly believe that science describes or addresses everything, "observable" or not, in the entire universe of human experience and that if something is not explained by science then it is "wrong". Such people may not know it but they subscribe to a philosophy termed Scientism, a philosophy that I doubt many scientists themselves follow. They perhaps forget that that very concept (i.e. that "thought") cannot be measured or explained by science. Attempts to "measure" a spiritual thing such as a concept amount to nothing more than attempting to measure their influence or effects on the human body. Hubbard, in addition to taking a few stabs at that "ultimate reality" previously mentioned, attempted to bring an understanding to the spiritual universe akin to that brought to physics by physical scientists. That does not make Scientology a "physical science"; it might be termed a "spiritual science" if one were to term it a science at all; it is better termed "an applied religious philosophy" which is what Hubbard termed it. However, it works and it is reproducible. If I apply the principle of the ARC triangle to my relationship with another person, I get the uniform result of improved understanding between us and a more harmonious relationship. The fact that people can "naturally" do this does not invalidate the "law of ARC" no more than the fact that people can "naturally" fall down invalidates the law of gravity. Hubbard's genius was in describing what "laws" underlie human experience and when you look at human experience using Scientology it makes much more sense and you can be more effective in life. You don't need to understand Hubbard's "Axioms" and "Factors" to be effective with Scientology, you can just learn the techniques mechanically. Just like you don't need to understand aerodynamics, metallurgy, and mechanical engineering to be an effective pilot, you just learn the techniques of flying.

It is interesting that the recent lecture by Pope Benedict XVI that started such a stir was not so much about Islam as it was about this very point; what is reason and what is science in relation to religion. The lecture was entitled Faith, Reason and the University; Memories and Reflections and is a "critique of modern reason". The lecture makes interesting reading for those interested in the intersection of science and religion.

In the lecture, the Pope discusses the "modern [i.e. limited - Justanother] concept of reason [...] based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology." and makes the following observation:

"This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned."

He continues, "it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective."

The Pope concludes that there is a need for "broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity [i.e. the technological fruits of "modern scientific reason" - Justanother], we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons".

While Hubbard may have, at some point, had the intention that Scientology be an attempt to expand the limited definition of reason and science beyond the merely measurable, it has, for better or worse, become something else altogether. Early on in the history of Scientology, Hubbard "gave" it freely to the world and, at that point, Scientology might have been described as a protoscience. Later, it seems, he reconsidered that "gift" and, in one of Scientology's most important Policy Letters, Keeping Scientology Working, he claimed that contributions from others had been of no real value, had in fact been almost uniformily destructive, and that Scientology would not entertain contributions by anyone other than himself. With that stroke, Scientology moved from protoscience to dogma. Hubbard believed that it was more important that the "workable path" that he had developed remain unaltered than that Scientology be developed further by a community. History will perhaps prove him right or wrong in that but that viewpoint does not detract from the value of what he created.

An Open Letter to Scientologists

For now, I quote from previous posts. I stress the importance of wikipedia and invite more Scientologists to edit here in a spirit of cooperation. I will expand on this theme in the future and post a "hat write-up" of what I feel it takes to successfully edit here (for now "grant beingness to other editors" will work pretty well). This is a big job and the more people working on it, the better.

On mirroring

"Someone that wanted to know about Scientology might google the term and be presented with these top three choices; the official CoS site, the clambake site, and wikipedia. They might recognize that the first two would be clearly biased but might mistake wikipedia for being encyclopedic and unbiased on the subject of Scn. While wikipedia might be a great source for many topics, even the critic's crow their success in making the Scientology articles a mass of "entheta" (Scn for lies, upsets, misinformation - Touretzky gleefully proclaims wikipedia an "entheta-palooza" on the subject of Scientology).[1] Both sides basically seek to make wikipedia a mirror of their own websites; the critics are winning. My goal is to make it encyclopedic and to show the good side of Scn in the sympathetic light it deserves while not discounting the bad side. Meaning that I will not contribute to the bad side but neither will I try to prevent it from being PROPERLY presented (i.e. derogatory information must be well-referenced, and discredited or biased sources reported in reliable sources to be such should be labeled as such). I should mention that I feel that there are plenty of editors here that are "mirror images" of myself, i.e. they are "no fans of Scientology" but would not dream of standing in the way of my well presented presentation of the good in Scientology provided that I allowed critics the same rights as I ask for for myself. ... On the other hand, there are some that want to prevent ANY presentation of the good side of Scn. They probably feel that Scn is SO bad that any good is irrelevant; it would be like mentioning that Ted Bundy bought Girl Scout cookies to support the Girl Scouts. Such a claim is ridiculous and insulting to the perhaps 500,000 active Scientologists that would disagree and all those that they impact favorably."

On doing the work

Note: Written during a discussion of Space Opera in Scientology but generally applicable.

When we, as Scientologists, leave the "heavy lifting" to critics or editors with easy access to only critical sources then we do not have a lot of room to complain about how those editors "load" the articles (heavy lifting . . . load?). Some room, just not a lot. We can only, IMO, ask them to be true to their sources, we cannot ask them to "uncriticalize" their critical sources. That is what often happens, though. The Scientologist comes here, sees it all skewed and misrepresented and complains that the editors are all acting in bad faith, The editors go, like, "WTF?" The editors are being true to their sources and cannot easily see the blatant bias in those sources because they often (with exceptions, of course) have no or very little experience dealing with real Scientology or real Scientologists. The evaluation that they are "bad faith" often made by the Scientologists acts as a "wrong indicator" and causes upset (it is very upsetting for someone to tell you what is "wrong" with you and they, themselves, be wrong about that. As I may have myself made that self-same offense above, let me state that it is also likely true that many editors DO see the bias in those sources and try to use them as best they can in a neutral fashion; making NPOV stew out of POV meat; not sure how possible that is). The only workable solution is for Scientologists to take the pandetermined (caring for all sides of a debate or upset; not taking sides) position and sort out the offending article first then bring up any questions as to its notability. The solution is not, IMO, to attack the article; that just leads to more games condition (human behavior seen in entrenched partisan stands; digging in, defending, attacking, etc.) By sort out I mean fix it, make it true. The truth is that there is lots of Space Opera in Scientology (in quantity, not percentage, the percentage is tiny); the truth is most of it is not doctrine; some of it is; some of it is older doctrine but key policy (HCOB Tech Degrades) says ALL Scientology tech remains valid so the only statement that could be made about older line charts might be that they are not on the Bridge (though who knows as the Upper Bridge is secret so even that cannot be reliably stated); it is true is that, in context of Scientology; space opera is "no big deal, like, so what"; it is true that much of it is non-notable Hubbard banter. If a Scientologist's mission here is not to present the truth about this subject but instead to suppress the information then that Scientologist is acting as an enemy to the goals of wikipedia and wikipedians will treat the Scientologist as an enemy (and subsequent Scientologists too until proven otherwise). --Justanother 13:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

On the cabal

There is no cabal and casting problems encountered in that light will not solve anything and will, in fact, worsen things. All there is are people; the "normal" interactions of people. Add to that the "natural" bias of people against anything that they do not understand, the "natual" tendency of people to make themselves right and others wrong if at all threatened; the fact that a group will generally defer to their lowest common denominator, the anonymity and concomitant lack of responsibility possible (note I say possible) in editors, especially non-admins; the laissez-faire attitude of the community, editors and admins alike, toward violation of the WP:PILLARS in those areas of systemic bias such as religion in general and NRMs in particular. Add all that together and you have, well, you have what we have. And until admins start enforcing the WP:PILLARS as being the very foundation that wikipedia stands upon and not some "nicety"; until a few of them start taking visible stands, instead of standing back and watching; things will not improve. And why do I say admins need to enforce the WP:PILLARS, instead of saying "editors"? Because admins are looked to to set the tone here and if they do not set the tone then the tone will be set by human nature and general internet irresponsibility. Gulp. --Justanother 14:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Some things others have said

User:Slightlyright[2]

I came here originally wanting to find one of the Scientology axioms so I could compare it to some mathematical statements made in an old physics paper called EPR. I wasn't able to find the axioms here. The axioms are the foundation of Scientology. They should be here. So should a discussion of how a few auditing procedures are derived from the axioms and maybe an informed narrative of what might happen as one traverses the bridge, etc. But that is something we can get in here if we can revise a fundamental postulate held (possibly unknowingly) by some in this community.

“

The incorrect and counterproductive consideration that seems to pervade the community is this:

Scientology is not a subject - it is instead controversy about a pseudo subject.

”

If this consideration is true, then of course it makes no difference whether a contributor knows anything about Scientology - the controversy is freely and easily available to anyone – it requires no study, no practice to learn how to apply it, no prior knowledge of Scientology at all to comprehend and comment upon and point to the controversy. In support of my assertion, consider this: if the 'Trix had stated instead, (NOTE: altered quotation follows) "Also, I highly disagree with the idea that physicists know better how to write about string theory than others. As long as proper citation of sources occurs, it doesn't matter what an editor's background is, and in fact, less bias is likely to occur." This altered statement is of course weak, if not ridiculous, but only if the writer believes that physics is actually a subject that is not instantly understandable upon casual inspection. If physics were simple to understand for the unstudied, then this might have some merit.

Scientology is, however, a technical subject. It has axioms upon which are built procedures which when applied by a competent, certified practitioner deterministically bring about predictable results. The results are spiritual in nature and have to do with increased ability, freedom from the negative present time effects of past troubles, past traumas and past failures to achieve desired goals. The results are subjective and not objectively verifiable, so Scientology will generally fail a strict test of the strict definition of science. But it is still technical. Study is required to understand it and speak about it in an informed manner. Practice (in the form of formal internships) is required to correctly use Scientology auditing procedures.

. . .

If we can achieve some community consensus that Scientology is actually a subject, then we might have some chance of building a decent article or set of articles about it. If we cannot, then the article will continue to be a shining example of a horribly bad encyclopedia article.

His entire post bears reading. I may prune these excepts later.

Laurie Hamilton

With the combination of open content editing and the promulgation of anti-Scn views veiled as "NPOV" there, if Scientology were sugar, the articles could not state that it is sweet, useful in baking, and provides food energy to cells. They would have to say "some claim" it is sweet but "it has been reported by others" to be bitter, that it is widely acknowedged to be a key factor in causing type II diabetes, obesity, and even death, and that one is cautioned against eating baked goods containing it because it can cause tooth decay up to and including the loss of all of one's teeth.

I got a Barnstar (and other awards)

		The Original Barnstar
		For being generally understanding and reasonable in regards to the Barbara Schwarz AfD. Dennisthe2 21:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		Thanks for kind advice to a newcomer. S. M. Sullivan 23:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

(He gave me TWO and I am keeping them both!)

		The Original Barnstar
		for helpful advice to a newcomer S. M. Sullivan 23:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

		The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
		Thanks for being nice and keeping your calm although I did something that was kind of stupid. Matei Tache 21:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Just some links for me

Probably in some order (or not)

Dad

This user is a father and proud of it!

en

This user is a native speaker of the English language.

US

This user uses American English.

This user is a Scientologist and feels that does not affect his ability to maintain WP:NPOV.

This user values third opinions and occasionally provides one.

This user is a member of WikiProject Reference Desk Article Collaboration

This user can drive.

This user does not contribute by using a web browser. Rather, they upload material directly to the internet by using the awesome power of their mind.