THE INGREDIENT OF TRUTH.

In a Professional Bulletin, L. Ron Hubbard once said: "In all aberration we discover that it is the ingredient of truth which maintains the aberration in force."—P.A.B. No. 46
Every level of the tone scale contains an "ingredient of truth," and this is what each person uses to defend his emotional temperament. The person in Fear says, "What’s wrong with being a little careful?" Propitiation asks: "Why shouldn’t you do things for people? Isn’t that what life’s all about?"
They’re both right, of course. There’s enough truth in each tone to make a person feel justified in his emotional inclinations; but it is only part of the truth.
There was the case of the butcher who lost both legs and worked around his shop in a wheel chair for fifteen years. One day his granddaughter, Debbie, was playing in a neighbor’s yard with a friend when a strange man came out of the house. Debbie asked, "Who’s that?"
"That’s my grandfather," her friend replied.
"No," said Debbie scornfully, "he can’t be your grandfather."
"Why not?"
"Because grandfathers don’t have legs, silly."
That was Debbie’s ingredient of truth about grandfathers. It was right as far as it went. Thus it is with the tones. Each one is right as far as it goes; but it only goes far enough to become a mockery of the higher emotions.
Every tone level is fortified with clichйs, bromides, proverbs and whole philosophies to justify the position. Only with the use of the Emotional Tone Scale can we differentiate between a truly sane attitude and it’s lowtone imitation. Let’s look at some of the levels to see what sayings a person might use to excuse his tone.
APATHY
"Give me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change." This might well be the prayer of a high-tone person because he is basically realistic about his ambitions. Apathy, however, thinks you can’t change anything anyway, so his brand of serenity is only the weakness of the overwhelmed.
MAKING AMENDS
A regrettable influence on mankind is the King James translation of the beatitude, "Blessed are the meek . .
This phrase is a paradox to thinking man, for "meek" implies spineless submissiveness. Many experts consider this word a faulty translation. In fact, the French Douay Bible translates the beatitude as: "Blessed are the debonair. ."
"Debonair," according to the dictionary, is "affable, gracious, genial, carefree, gay and jaunty." That’s high-tone. It makes more sense.
Personally, I’ve never seen a doormat inherit anything but a little more mud.
GRIEF
"To weep is to make less the depth of grief." Yes, if he can shed his grief through tears, one can move back upscale again. The stuck Grief person, however, just keeps finding more to wail about.
The upscale individual takes pleasure in remembering and describing pleasant experiences from the past. Grief, too, reminisces; but he thinks the past is all there is, so his stories are basted with dripping regrets and spiced with nostalgic mi ght-have-beens.
PROPITIATION
Is it really better to give than to receive? Yes. The high-tone person is a generous one (after the needs of self and family are met), and his giving tends to promote survival. The downscale mockery, Propitiation, however, gives because he is too weak to do otherwise. He’s trying to buy off danger, so his hidden motive is to stop the recipient and render him harmless.
SYMPATHY
"There is always someone worse off than yourself." Yes, indeed, and Sympathy delights in finding every one of them. At the top levels we discover a natural empathy. He doesn’t enjoy seeing someone in difficulty and will do his best to help the person out of it. Sympathy, on the other hand, pats the unfortunate one on the head, murmurs "poor dear," and does his best to keep him there.
FEAR
"Look before you leap." The upscale person has a healthy respect for danger if his actual survival is threatened; but his fear is balanced with courage and good judgment. The person at 1.0 is afraid of everything.
COVERT HOSTILITY
"Count to ten before you lose your temper" may be sound practice for one who is above Anger, but it’s suppressive to one below that emotion for it leaves him without a safety valve and fixes him in the lower tones.
"The day is lost in which one has not laughed." Upscale we find a fun-loving spirit of play. The 1 .1 however, takes everything so seriously that he now pretends to be unserious. He manifests compulsive laughter, a constant effort to entertain or a sweet, insincere mimicry of highscale good humor. He jokes at others’ expense. He mocks and makes fun of everything he can’t do himself. He must show that it doesn’t matter and "it’s all amusing." He’s the witty, cynical critic—the player who spends all his time on the bench.
"Don’t tell everything you know." The high-tone person can be discreet; but he’s not sneaky. The 1.1 prides himself on being "subtle," which is merely a way of defending the subterfuge with which he covers up his perverted activities.
NO SYMPATHY
Kipling said, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. . ." The No Sympathy person prides himself on never getting emotional; he’s always in control.
The high-tone fellow doesn’t panic in a crisis. He handles emergencies better than anyone else; but he needn’t consign his soul to the Deepfreeze in order to keep his cool. He’s a warm-hearted, loving person who’s willing to feel emotions.
ANGER
"You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs." The upscale person is courageous enough to destroy where necessary for survival or when it benefits the greatest number. Anger, driven by false bravado, only breaks the eggs; he never does get around to making the omelet.
ANTAGONISM
"You have to fight fire with fire." When the upscale person gets some opposition thrown at him, he turns it to his advantage; he neither collapses nor gets endlessly involved in fighting it. The "truth" at 2.0, however, is reflected in the necessity to challenge anything that seems threatening. He tries to build a fire out of every spark.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
There are hundreds of memorable passages (both profound and trite) containing an ingredient of truth which can be used to amplify below 2.0 emotions. For a helpful exercise, examine the similarities and differences between upscale truths and their downscale mockeries. Do this especially before you accept advice; it may be attractively gift-wrapped in a low-tone package.
Many self-help books are in the catagory of neartruths. I read such a book recently by an experienced psychologist who pointed out the flaws in numerous human attitudes. He condemned whining, bootlicking, false veneer and competitiveness. Most of his advice, however, rested in the tone of Boredom. He suggested that one should ". . . sway with the breeze. Take life as it comes. Adjust. Don’t set your hopes impossibly high. Don’t try to thrive on daydreams. Just enjoy what’s here."
Some of his advice rested in Apathy: "We should not try to understand man’s conduct," he claimed, "because asking why we do things is of little use. There are no causes for behavior."
He further advised the reader to be neither optimistic nor pessimistic because both attitudes were crutches used by those who lacked confidence in themselves. We should take life as it comes, he tells us, not dwelling in hope because it’s only wishful thinking.
These statements contain both elements of truth and something false. All of us might hope for a saner world. An idealistic dream, to be sure. The lowscale person only listlessly wishes that someone would do something about it. The uptone individual discovers a way to make one man saner, and another, so he keeps working toward his dream, and his life has a purpose. A man without hope is a flower that never blooms, a sun without warmth, a man with no tomorrow. Hope is man’s link with the future.
In short, this book was telling us that in order to be "mature" one should quit hoping and trying and getting all involved and frustrated. Throw away the oars instead, and let the current take your boat wherever it will. At best this is Boredom; at worst it’s Apathy. In either case, it’s a limp surrender. No high-tone person needs to compromise with mediocrity. And no man needs to settle for less than high-tone.
I read another interesting self-help book which promised to make the reader "powerful and influential with people." The author started off advocating that one walk with confidence, look people right in the eye, observe good manners, courtesy and respect. Sounds good; but this turned out to be another downscale look-alike. When he began proposing methods for artificially boosting status and leveling others down, I realized that the author was selling a 1.1 and 1.2 mockery of power. Nearly every paragraph advocated smooth, but covert, methods for getting attention and putting others down. He warned the reader: "Other people are out to get you, to nullify your status, prestige or authority. Never relax for a moment or someone will push you off your pedestal."
He repeatedly cautioned against the danger of losing one’s temper: "Keep a tight control." He even offered several techniques for introverting the other person with snide, well-placed questions when there was any risk of venting Anger. The book could be summarized briefly: the way to be powerful is to suppress everyone else; but do it nicely with a smile on your face.
Sometimes we see the results of research by sincere people who (because they do not know the tone scale) arrive at false judgments. Recently I heard of a London psychiatrist who concluded after several years of study that "good girls grow up to be bad mothers." He explained that a young girl who always minds her mother, does just as she’s told at home or school, and never causes any trouble or fuss, turns out to be inadequate as a mother because there is no longer anyone telling her what to do.
Those "good girls" were obviously Fear or below, since no spirited, upscale child is so blindly obedient that she remains dependent.
What his research actually tells us is that 1) many people consider a downscale, submissive child to be a "good girl" and 2) the low-tone child grows into a low-tone adult.
SUMMARY
Before you accept the ancient proverb, the popular cliche or the advice of an "expert," look beyond the ingredient of truth for the emotion behind those words of alleged wisdom