GRATUITOUS RELEASES, MORE ABOUT

Every once in a while in administrative activities, some staff member will blink and his jaw will drop. I will give him a piece of paper to sign. Something's giving us trouble someplace or another. Something's going over the hills and far away, and I give him a piece of paper to sign. I always take this chance because there's a possibility it'll happen. And as a matter of fact the odds are in favor that it will work out this way, because this person is already doing something very destructive in attacking Scientology.

So you write up a confession or a note or a document taking full responsibility for this, that or the other thing, just a suicidal legal document.

Write it up and give it to the attorney and he will sit there and be very other-determined about the whole thing. "Nobody who's signing this," they're being unreasonable. It would be very unfair to the person who would sign, "Well, and very very unfair to us, why not unfair to them?"

But if this couldn't possibly figure this out because it would ruin all attorneying the attorney principle were broadly known. About eighty percent of their cases would just go *pfft*.

You set it down in front of the person, and you say, "Sign it." And the person reads it over. "I hereby guarantee to pay $1,750,000 damages and fully and freely confess that I burned the house down and…"

"Sign it"

"Is that satisfactory?"

I don't know what the percentage is, but it's a very high percentage that whenever I've done that, the other person signs.

Only they trouble with our own attorneys. They're always trying to make a fight out of it. And they'll win the other person's case for them if you don't watch them. So you try to bypass them. Because the truth of the matter is that somebody who's so nonsurvival as to try some stupid, silly attack against us can usually be couped upon to be sufficiently nonresponsive, will also commit suicide from a legal viewpoint. And they do. It's amazing.

In other words, about sixty, seventy percent of the cases that walk into court—if either one of the litigants made a document for something in a £50 debt involved and if somebody would just write up a judgment for 200 at compound interest (you know, £50 and a £150 damages) and a penalty or something at £50—a totally vicious document—because it's given to the other person to sign, they'd sign it. They would appreciate it and just gave it to them. That's where they belong.

The world operates on the basis that everybody defends himself and that everybody is in this world self-preservation. And this is so. The people who are causing trouble in the kick of the are not on a kick of self-preservation. They're on a kick of succumb, and they look to me to be an executioner to an auditor, or they look to an organization. Or our biggest trouble is they look to.

And you only get serious trouble when we refuse to fill the role. That is quite amazing. We'll see this work out in your own activities, I am sure.

I think this ought to be seen in your work in organizations. But you're trying to be reasonable. This guy walks up and he says, "The organization is no good, and everybody in thought to be killed. And you're bad people, or something like this. He's usually not direct like that; he's usually going around the neighborhood saying, "That's really a communist organization," to all the shopkeepers or something like that.

And right away all your legal advice says you sue him for slander. No. You present him with a confession and an award of damages for having slandered, just draw it up in a legal form and give it to him and he'll sign it and you'll execute in court. And that's all there is to it. You don't sue him.

The guy has only one enemy: himself, exclusively. He just has one enemy. And he'll go on and fight until he finds a satisfactory succumb.

You try to make a bargain with this fellow. You keep saying, "Well, all right. You pay $200." And your ordinary bargaining is, "All right. Well, you won't pay $200? All right. Pay $150. Oh, all right. You won't pay $150. pay $100." You're trying to make a deal that's the wrong direction.

You say to this person, "$200."

The person, "Oh, no, no, no."

And you say, "Well, $250?" $300? You finally get it up to $790, and that's how much he thinks he ought to cut his throat for. And he signs at that point.

This principle of other-determinism—I'm not going a psychotic spin and starts we operate the organizations (which happens quite enough), legal advice is normally and attacking this way exclusively, but if some guy goes on driving home to you as though generally 100 percent wrong, because it is operating on the basis that those people are being self-determined. And if those other people are attacking you are being other-determined, then they will not settle any reasonable deal that gives them a benefit.

You have to make a deal which is murderous to them. You just keep worsening the deal you make, you see, and they'll eventually square it up.