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Free essay on personality test
Evaluation of personal development
Free essay on personality test
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“What are your strong points? What are the problem areas that are denying you to achieve your goals?” These are the first two of the two hundred question ‘free personality test’ you were offered on Hollywood Blvd. The test can take up to three hours without disruptions from your friendly Scientologist monitoring you. At the end of your test, you will be told you are miserable and should definitely take one of Scientology’s self-help courses for a ‘small fee.’ Soon you will start thinking you’re actually miserable and you’ll begin to take more and more courses until you’re broke and you’ve signed the Billion Year Contract with the church. The Church of Scientology was founded in 1954 by a popular science-fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard, most notably attached to Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Hubbard was born March 13th,1911 in Tilden, Nebraska. At the age of 16, Hubbard enrolled as a junior at Helena High School and moved in with his grandparents. That same year, “He begins his interest in black magic by reading Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law and begins to use drugs to improve his magical powers.” In 1930, Hubbard joins a Marine Corps Reserve Training Unit and is placed inactive for almost the 18 …show more content…
months he served. From there, Hubbard tried to get in to the Air Corps in 1938 and then the US Army in 1939 only to fail all tests and exams. Using false criteria, he is elected in to the New York Explorers’ Club. While in New York, Hubbard tried hard to get a commission in the US Naval Reserve but was only assigned to intelligence duties.
Eventually, Hubbard receives his license for sail vessels and heads to Melbourne to perform duties he was never qualified to do. He gets in trouble with authorities and is sent back to the US. From 1942 to 1944, Hubbard gets himself in some trouble with a number of countries and in 1945, admits himself to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. His injuries from ‘battle’? An ulcer and headaches. He later writes that his days in the battle zone resulted in bullet wounds and was called out for his bravery while he served. He used his ‘ground breaking techniques’ he had developed from Dianetics to heal
himself. During this journey of his, he gets involved in a bigamous marriage with Sara Elizabeth Northrup and they have a daughter named Alexis Valerie Hubbard. Ron was an abusive man and used guilt, physical abuse, and manipulation to get things his way with Sara. She later filed for divorce after he had kidnapped (and returned) their daughter. Hubbard begins to open Dianetics centers throughout the east coast and acquires the rights to a device called an “E-meter.”
Hubbard disagrees with the idea that science is immune to power and politics. To think that science is neutral one must assume that the scientist is able to remove himself from the test subject and the surroundings and simply observe without affecting the test in any way. In reality this is impossible. The scientist must design the test, perform it, and be prepared to fix it if it does not address the problem he has posed. Because human beings are imperfect, the tests are also imperfect. As a result, the conclusion the scientist reaches is no longer objective, but influenced by the type of results he is expecting.
According to dictionaries a cult is 1) a system of religious worship or ritual. 2) A religion or sect considered extremist of false. 3) Obsessive devotion to a person or principle. It is believed that every cult ties into some kind of religion, and religions all have a common basis of “a leap of faith”. Whether this so-called leap of faith is going to heaven or being reincarnated, or moving on to some other planet, depends on the beliefs of the cult itself.
In Lee Ann Fisher Baron’s “Junk Science,” she claims that the “food industry with the help of federal regulators” sometimes use “[a science that] bypasses [the] system of peer review. Presented directly to the public by…‘experts’ or ‘activists,’ often with little or no supporting evidence, this ‘junk science’ undermines the ability…[for] everyday consumers to make rational decisions” (921). Yet Americans still have a lot of faith in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to a 2013 Pew Research study, 65% of Americans are “very favorable” or “mostly favorable” of the FDA. When it comes to what people put in their bodies, the FDA has a moral obligation to be truthful and transparent. The bottom line of the FDA’s myriad of responsibilities is to help protect the health of Americans. Deciding what to eat is a critical part of living healthily, and consumers must be able to trust that this massive government agency is informing them properly of the contents of food. While the FDA does an excellent job in many areas, it has flaws in other areas. One of its flaws is allowing the food industry to print food labels that are deceptive, unclear, or simply not true (known as misbranding). This is quite the hot topic because a Google search for “Should I trust food labels” returns well over 20 million results, many of which are blog posts from online writers begging their readers not to trust food labels. HowStuffWorks, a division of Discovery Communications, published an online article whose author claims that “[the food industry] will put what they want on labels. They know the game….” While the food industry is partially at blame for misbranding, the FDA is allowing it to happen. If a mother tells her children that it is oka...
Chicago’s transition from fur – trading outpost to a capitalist town, was a cultural revolution that Hubbard helped bring forward. By knowing Chicago’s history, it’s said to also know the Gurdon Hubbard story. Hubbard was born on August 22, 1802 in Vermont; his father, Elizur, was one of Windsor’s five lawyers and his mother was from Puritan stock. After his father lost their money they were forced to move to Montreal, where Elizur was able to make a decent living. When Hubbard was sixteen he signed to be a clerk for the American Fur Company headed to Michigan. He became friends with another clerk named John Harris Kinzie, whose father (John Kinzie) was a trader in Chicago. Hubbard made his first entry to Chicago on October 1, 1818. One day he and others had made preparations to cross the portage, where it convinces Hubbard the need for a canal critical since it was very muddy and filled with insects and animals. Hubbard later on, became head of Deschamp’s trading posts after the old man retired and later at Danville, where he established his headquarters in
The history of Scientology shows its persistence to keep their members with the promise of spiritual enlightenment. Scientology was founded in the mid-twentieth century by renowned science-fiction author L Ron Hubbard. (Sweeney) The basic foundation of the church stems from the ideas of his best-selling book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. (Anderson) Dianetics was published on May 9, 1950, and the date would become recognized among Scientologists as a religious holiday. Hubbard claimed that the discovery of the science of dianetics is “a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and the arch” (Reitman 58). The book’s ideas encourage humanity to rid the individual of any of their mental weaknesses (18). It went on to make its way up the bestseller list by the summer o...
Cults are dangerous institutions that have existed for many years, corrupting and reforming the minds of innocent people into believing outrageous doctrines that eventually result in disaster. Horrifying cases involving men such as Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh have bewildered people and raise the question: how could individuals be easily susceptible to the teachings of these men, so influenced that masses go as far as to commit the unthinkable? Individuals who are in a vulnerable position in search for an identity are attracted to cults because they offer a sense of belonging. In addition, isolation from society contributes to the functioning of a cult for it creates an atmosphere where submissiveness and obedience runs high. These two factors seem to hold true for one of the most notorious cults currently established in the United States and Canada. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or, FLDS, is an international polygamist sect that incorporates belonging and isolation along with a dangerous mentality that have resulted in the abuse of women and children in the name of God.
People join cults as a way of feeling a sense of belonging within a community (Winner 2011:417). This need for belonging is eventually why members find themselves so involved that they cannot get out. This is especially true in the case of the cult created by Jim Jones. He established a cultic Church called the People’s Temple, most famously known for being the largest group suicide consisting of 909 people, including 276 children (Nelson 2006). Between five to seven million young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 are involved in cult groups (“Cult statistics” 2010). Nearly 180 000 people are recruited into cults each year (“Cult Statistics” 2010). The sense of identity, purpose, and belonging are appealing aspects to why people join cults as the use of power and manipulation coerces them to stay.
For many years, cult leaders always had a psychological hold on their followers' minds. Whether it was to kill other people or to kill themselves, they did it without question. Some cult leaders used fear, violence and guilt as a means of a weapon to control the minds of their followers. Other cult leaders used persuasive and spiritual speeches that made their followers believe they were doing good and fulfilling God's plan. Because cult leaders are powerful through psychological offenses, the people that belong to their cults are brainwashed into doing things they wouldn't normally do in their right state of mind.
Cults have existed throughout history since the beginning of time. A cult is defined in Webster’s dictionary as a “system of religious worship with a devoted attachment to a person, principle, etc.” Over the past thirty years numerous religious cults have caused “ tens of thousands to abandon their families, friends, education’s, and careers to follow the teaching of a leader they will never meet”(Beck 78).
Free speech comes in many forms, some offensive and some non-offensive. One of the more offensive sites on the Internet is the homepage for the World Church of the Creator.
When one hears of a cult, one thinks of organizations such as the Church of Scientology, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and small fanatical groups such as the Assembly of God. According to Robert J. Lofton, author of Letters to an Elder, there are two kinds of cults; those that use mind-control, and those that do not. Lofton describes eight characteristics of destructive mind-control cults, saying, “If any group exercises all eight of these control elements, they are, in fact a destructive mind control cult”. Lofton’s characteristics are ‘Environmental Control’, ‘Mystical Manipulation’, ‘Demand for Purity’, ‘Cult of Confession’, ‘Sacred Science’, ‘Loading the Language’, ‘Doctrine over Person’, and ‘Dispensing of Existence’. These eight characteristics are found not only in the organizations mentioned earlier, but also in more mainstream organizations. The Roman Catholic Church exhibits all eight characteristics very strongly, making it fit the profile of a destructive mind-control cult.
What makes a person join a cult? What happens in a person's life to make them completely change they way they used to talk and act? Many are puzzled about the mysterious happenings in a cult member's life. They wonder how one could become involved in such a group. The forces that draw individuals into cults can be explained by psychological doctrine. Many in the psychology field have sought to provide answers to the various questions that society has.
Christian Science is a religion that lets you understand God, Jesus and everything. Christian Science was founded in1879 by Mary Baker Eddy, who studied health and science. Her book she wrote “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” is used as one of Christian Sciences sacred texts. Christian Science does not have anything to do with Scientology, they are completely different religions. Christian Scientist believe in an all-powerful God and the authority and inspiration of the Bible, and think of God as principle, soul, mind, spirit, life, truth, and love. Christian Scientists believe that we are not real, Heaven and Hell don’t exist, to believe that everything is real is an error. There is no death because we are immortal spirits, God is the only one that truly exists.
The crux of Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life lies in the concept of collective effervescence, or the feelings of mutually shared emotions. Through a hermeneutical approach, Durkheim investigates the reflexiveness of social organization, the balance between form and content, and the immense cooperation in collective representations. In his work, society is the framework of humanity and gives it meaning, whereas religion acts as the tool to explain it. Since society existed prior to the individual, the collective mind must be understood before the concept of the individual can be grasped. However, one component seems missing from his social theory – what underlies society in terms of rituals and rites? Only when this element is fleshed out can the individual be comprehended with respect to the collective conscience. One, out of many, possibilities is the often-overlooked influence of emotions. What is the connection between social functions and emotions? Perhaps emotions reify social solidarity by means of a collective conscience. Durkheim posits the notion that society shares a bilateral relationship with emotional experiences, for the emotions of collective effervescence derive from society but also produce and maintain the social construct.
After doing this personality test, I realize that it was true what I have been