How To Choose Your People Chapter 1

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Chapter 1 — The Common Denominator

THE COMMON DENOMINATOR

''The basic nature of Man is not bad. It is good. But between him and that goodness are fears, rages and repression's."

L. Ron Hubbard, ''The Free Man, " Ability 232

A wise person once said that no two people are exactly alike. For this we can be eternally grateful.

People come in tall sizes, short sizes and assorted colors. There are varied backgrounds, experiences and people who enjoy molded plastic flamingos perched in their front yards.

Despite obviously unique personalities, however, Ron Hubbard encountered one common denominator in everyone: emotions.

Emotions!

He must be talking about that neurotic woman screaming at the mouse, the child throwing tantrums when he can't have a cookie, the frightened soldier who won't go back to the battlefield, the wife sobbing hysterically that her husband doesn't love her.

What's that got to do with you and me and the mild little bookkeeper down the street? We're not emotional. That's a derogatory word.

As I read Ron Hubbard's work, however, I began observing all the people I knew (when unavoidable, I even looked at myself). His statements all appeared to be true. Every person is clinging to some attitude about life – he finds it grim, fright- ening, regretful, maddening or wonderful – but his viewpoint is not governed by reasoning or intellect. It is determined by emotion.

Ron Hubbard's significant discovery revealed three important facts about emotions:

1. There's a package of fixed responses that goes with every emotion. 2. Emotions fall into a certain order – going from grim to great.

3. There are layers of restrained emotions, formerly unrecognized .

THE EMOTIONAL PACKAGE

Accompanying each emotion is a complete, unvarying package of attitudes and behavior. Therefore, once we recognize that a person is in grief (whether tem- porarily or chronically, we can expect him to be lamenting: "I was betrayed. Nobody loves me. Things used to be better." We also know how he will behave in most situa- tions. The rich and beautiful actress who takes a bottle of sleeping pills feels the same overwhelming hopelessness as the skid row bum sitting in the gutter hugging his empty bottle. Although using different stage settings and different costumes, they're both reading the same lines. The person who's looking at the world through apathy- colored glasses is close to death, no matter what his background or his present environment. Every comment, every decision, every action is colored by his apathy.

THE ORDER OF EMOTIONS

It was while researching methods for improving mental health that Ron Hubbard encountered a consistent pattern of responses as people advanced. Helping individuals erase the effects of painful past experiences, he found they often mani- fested apathy at first and as the work proceeded, they moved through certain emotional stages that always occurred in the same unvarying order for every person: grief, fear, covert hostility, anger (or combativeness), antagonism, boredom, contentment and well-being. This change from painful emotions to pleasant emotions was such a reliable indication of success that he began to use it as the basic yardstick of his progress with each person.

He next found that he could plot these emotional responses on a scale, with the happier ones on the top and the miserable ones on the bottom. Soon it was ap- parent that every person is somewhere on this scale at all times, although he moves up and down as he experiences fortunes and misfortunes.

It also became evident that the higher a person's position on the Tone Scale of emotions, the better he survives. He's more capable of obtaining the necessities of living. He's happier, more alive, more confident and competent. He's winning. Conversely, the lower the person drops on the Tone Scale, the closer he is to death. He's losing, more miserable, ready to succumb.

If we are planning a difficult camping trip through wild, uninhabited country, the emotional scale tells us we should not choose a companion who mopes around complaining that it all sounds too hazardous. We should take the fellow who's looking forward to the trip.

People low on the scale don't look forward to things. The less willingly a per- son contemplates the future, the lower are his chances of surviving.

For identification, Ron Hubbard gave the various emotions a name and a number as he arranged them in order. He called his final sequence The Emotional Tone Scale. Each emotional position is called a "tone." Just as every musical tone is a sound of definite pitch and vibration, so each tone on the emotional scale contains its unique identifying characteristics. It would be hard to play a piano if the keys were intermixed rather than in succession. Similarly, it's nearly impossible to understand people and help them improve without an accurate scale to tell us exactly how high or low a person is on the emotional keyboard.

The dividing line of the tone scale is 2.0. Above this point, the person is sur- viving well. Below this level, his life expectancy is much poorer. Using this line, we refer to the people above it as "high-tone" or "upscale." People below 2.0 are "low- tone" or "downscale."

Whereas a high-tone person is rational, the low-tone person operates irrationally. The lower his tone, the more a person's decisions and behavior are governed by emotional feeling, regardless of his education or intellect.

RESTRAINED EMOTIONS

When we hear of the staid, "respectable" bank president with a devoted fam- ily who unexpectedly embezzles a hundred thousand dollars and absconds to South America with a young belly dancer, we may ask: "Whatever was he thinking of?" That's the trouble, of course. He wasn't thinking. He was feeling. Emotions ruled him as they do almost everyone. Likely such a person would take us by surprise only because his emotional tone was a restrained one. Some emotions are obvious because they're expressed. But Ron Hubbard observed that beneath every ex- pressed emotion there lies a band of restrained emotions:

Enthusiasm	4.0	ENTHUSIASM — expressed
Interest	3.5	ENTHUSIASM
Conservatism	3.0	ENTHUSIASM — restrained
Boredom	2.5
Antagonism	2.0
Pain	1.8	HOSTILITY — expressed
Anger	1.5	HOSTILITY
No Sympathy	1.2	HOSTILITY — restrained
Covert Hostility	1.1	HOSTILITY
Fear	1.0	FEAR — expressed
Sympathy	0.9	FEAR — restrained
Propitiation	0.8
Grief	0.5	GRIEF — expressed
Making Amends	0.375	GRIEF
Apathy	0.05	GRIEF — restrained

With the discovery of these subtle, restrained emotions, fitting like layers of a club sandwich between the expressed emotions, we now have a new classification of man's many attitudes about life.

None of this means that a person is locked permanently into any particular position. People can change. And sometimes a high-tone individual can fall sharply for a brief period. But if he is high-tone enough, he will bounce back.

HOW YOU CAN USE THIS MATERIAL

Once we know the basic characteristics of each emotion, we can meet a per- son for the first time and, within minutes, we can understand his present frame of mind. Longer observation will show us his most frequent (habitual) emotion. We will then know how well he's surviving and whether he will be an asset or a liability in our relationship. We will know how well he can execute a job, how truthful he is, how accurately he can relay a message or follow orders, how he feels about sex and children and whether or not we would want to be stranded on a desert island with him. This is better than relying on whims and folksy prejudices handed down from Grandma. Actually, it's the only possible way to choose your people.