HCOPL: Alter-Is and Degraded Beings

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex

HCO POLICY LETTER OF 22 MARCH 1967¹
Issue I
(Also issued as an HCOB, same date and title)

Remimeo
HCO Hats

IMPORTANT

Admin Know-How Series 14

ALTER-IS AND DEGRADED BEINGS

Alteration of orders and tech is worse than noncompliance.

Alter-is is a covert avoidance of an order. Although it is apparently often brought about by noncomprehension, the noncomprehension itself, and failure to mention it, is an avoidance of orders.

Very degraded beings alter-is. Degraded ones refuse to comply without mentioning it. Beings in fair condition try to comply but remark their troubles, to get help when needed. Competent higher-toned beings understand orders and comply if possible but mainly do their jobs without needing lots of special orders.

Degraded beings find any instruction painful, as they have been painfully indoctrinated with violent measures in the past. They therefore alter-is any order or don’t comply.

Thus, in auditing pcs or in org, where you find alter-is (covert noncompliance) and noncompliance, given sensible and correct tech or instructions, you are dealing with a degraded low-level being and should act accordingly.

One uses very simple low-level processes on a degraded being, gently.

In admin, orgs and especially the Tech Div where a staff member alter-ises or fails to comply, you are also dealing with a degraded being but one who is too much a pc to be a staff member. He cannot be at cause, and staff members must be at cause. So he or she should not be on staff.

This is a primary senior datum regulating all handling of pcs and staff members.

A degraded being is not a suppressive as he can have case gain. But he is so PTS that he works for suppressives only. He is sort of a super-continual PTS beyond the reach, really, of a simple S&D and handled only at Section III OT Course.

Degraded beings, taking a cue from SP associates, instinctively resent, hate and seek to obstruct any person in charge of anything or any Big Being.

Anyone issuing sensible orders is the first one resented by a degraded being.

A degraded being lies to his seniors, avoids orders covertly by alter-is, fails to comply, supplies only complex ideas that can’t ever work (obstructive) and is a general area of enturbulence, often mild seeming or even “cooperative,” often even flattering, sometimes merely dull, but consistently alter-ising or noncomplying.

This datum appeared during higher-level research and is highly revelatory of earlier unexplained phenomena-the pc who changes commands or doesn’t do them, the worker who can’t get it straight or who is always on a tea break.

In an area where suppression has been very heavy for long periods, people become degraded beings. However, they must have been so before already due to track incidents.

Some thetans are bigger than others. None are truly equal. But the degraded being is not necessarily a natively bad thetan. He is simply so PTS and has been for so long that it requires our highest-level tech to finally undo it after he has scaled up all our grades.

Degraded beings are about eighteen to one over Big Beings in the human race (minimum ratio). So those who keep things going are few. And those who will make it without the steam of the few in our orgs behind them are zero. At the same time, we can’t have a world full of them and still make it. So we have no choice.

And we can handle them even when they cannot serve at higher levels.

This is really OT data, but we need it at lower levels to get the job done.

L. Ron Hubbard
Founder

Notes