ASSIGNMENT >> 22. Read “The Importance of Work.”

THE IMPORTANCE OF WORK

Work is the stable datum of this society. Without something to do, there is nothing for which to live. A man who cannot work is as good as dead and usually prefers death and works to achieve it.

The mysteries of life are not today, with Scientology, very mysterious. Mystery is not a needful ingredient. Only the very irrational man desires to have vast secrets held away from him. Scientology has slashed through many of the complexities which have been erected for men and has bared the core of these problems. Scientology, for the first time in Man’s history, can predictably raise intelligence, increase ability, bring about a return to the ability to play a game and permits Man to escape from the dwindling spiral of his own disabilities. Therefore work itself can become, again, a pleasant and happy thing.

There is one thing that has been learned in Scientology, which is very important to the state of mind of the workman. One very often feels, in his society, that he is working for the immediate paycheck and that he does not gain, for the whole society, anything of any importance. He does not know several things. One of these is how few good workmen are. On the level of executives, it is interesting to note how precious any large company finds a man who can handle and control jobs and men really is. Such people are rare. All the empty space in the structure of this workaday world is at the top.

And there is another thing which is quite important. And that is the fact that the world today has been led to believe—by mental philosophies calculated to betray it—that when one is dead, it is all over and done with and one has no further responsibility for anything. It is highly doubtful if this is true. One inherits tomorrow what he died out of yesterday.

Another thing we know is that men are not dispensable. It is a mechanism of old philosophies to tell men that “If they think they are indispensable, they should go down to the graveyard and take a look—those men were indispensable too.” This is the sheerest foolishness. If you really looked carefully in the graveyard, you would find the machinist who set the models going in yesteryear and without whom there would be no industry today. It is doubtful if such a feat is being performed just now.

A workman is not just a workman. A laborer is not just a laborer. An office worker is not just an office worker. They are living, breathing, important pillars on which the entire structure of our civilization is erected. They are not cogs in a mighty machine. They are the machine itself.

the worse an individual or situation gets, the more capacity he or it has to get worse. Spiral here refers to a progressive downward movement, marking a relentlessly deteriorating state of affairs, and considered to take the form of a spiral. The term comes from aviation where it is used to describe the phenomenon of a plane descending and spiraling in smaller and smaller circles, as in an accident or feat of expert flying, which if not handled can result in loss of control and a crash.

most complete.

in the past, often a period with a set of values or a way of life that no longer exists.

a cog is literally part of a cogwheel, a wheel that has teeth (called cogs) of hardwood or metal made to insert between the teeth of another wheel so that they mesh. When one cogwheel is rotated, the other wheel is turned as well, thus transferring the motion to drive machinery. The term cog can be used to describe an individual carrying out minor, automatic actions as part of a larger, uncaring “machine.”