date & photographer unknown
Today is the birthday of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, better known as L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Scientology movement. I first was made aware of him and his movement in the early sixties which I wrote about in the Viewfinder (link below).
Born on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Nebraska, Hubbard was the author of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health in 1950. Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas that he called Dianetics, which he represented as a form of therapy.
After Dianetics went bankrupt, he recharacterized his ideas as a religion, likely for tax purposes, and renamed them Scientology which is variously defined as a cult, a business, a religion, or a scam.
photo: Los Angeles Daily News
When Scientology came under increasing media attention and legal pressure in a number of countries during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hubbard spent much of his time at sea as "commodore" of the Sea Organization, a private, quasi-paramilitary Scientologist fleet.
He returned to the United States in 1975 and went into seclusion in the California desert after an unsuccessful attempt to take over the town of Clearwater, Florida. In 1978, Hubbard was convicted of fraud in absentia by France. In the same year, 11 high-ranking members of Scientology were indicted on 28 charges for their role in the Church's Snow White Program, a systematic program of espionage against the United States government.
Hubbard spent the end of his life in seclusion, attended to by a small group of Scientology officials.
Following his death in 1986, Scientology leaders announced that Hubbard's
body had become an impediment to his work and that he had decided to
"drop his body" to continue his research on another plane of existence.
The Church of Scientology describes Hubbard in hagiographic terms, though many of his autobiographical statements were fictitious. Sociologist Stephen Kent has observed that Hubbard "likely presented a personality disorder known as malignant narcissism."
Hubbard created art in various mediums; he was the author of Battlefield Earth in 1982 and composed an album, Space Jazz, to accompany the book. In 1984, the LP was retitled Battlefield Earth, the version I have, bassist Stanley Clarke and keybordist Chick Corea perform on it (link below). In 2000, director Roger Christian made the book into a film which starred John Travolta, Barry Pepper, and Forest Whitaker.
Viewfinder links:
L. Ron Hubbard ~ Scientology & Battlefield Earth
Net links:
