Read Online Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard - Free Book Online Page B

been read largely into necessity. What is necessity? Besides being the “mother of invention,” is it a dramatic, sudden thing which excuses wars and murders, which touches a man only when he is about to starve? Or is necessity a much gentler and less dramatic quantity? “Everything,” according to Leucippus, “is driven by necessity.” This is a keynote of much theorizing down through the ages. Driven, that is the key to the error. Driven, things are driven. Necessity drives. Pain drives. Necessity and pain, pain and necessity.
    Recalling the dramatic and overlooking the important, Man has conceived himself, from time to time, to be an object of chase by necessity and pain. These were two anthropomorphic (manlike) things which, in full costume, stuck spears at him. It can be said to be a wrong concept merely because it does not work to produce more answers.
    Whatever there is of necessity is within him. Nothing is driving him except his original impetus to survive. And he carries that within himself or his group. Within him is the force with which he fends off pain. Within him is the force with which he attracts pleasure.
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    It chances to be a scientific fact that Man is a self-determined organism to the outermost limit that any form of life can be, for he still depends upon other forms of life and his general environment. But he is self-determined. This is a matter which will be covered later. But right here it is necessary to indicate that he is not inherently a determined organism in the sense that he is driven on this wonderful stimulus-response basis which looks so neat in certain text books, and works so completely unworkably in the world of Man. The happy little illustrations about rats do not serve when we are talking about Man. The more complex the organism, the less reliably these stimulus-response equation works. And when one reaches that highest complexity, Man, he has reached a fine degree of variability in terms of stimulus-response.
    The more sentient, the more rational an organism, the more that organism is self-determined.
    Self-determinism, like all things, is relative. Compared to a rat, however, Man is very self-determined indeed. This is only a scientific fact because it can easily be proven.
    The more sentient the man, the less he is a “push-button” instrument. Aberrated and reduced he can, of course, in a limited degree, be made to perform like a marionette, but then it is understood that the more aberrated a person is, the closer he approaches the intelligence quotient of an animal.
    Given this self-determinism, it is interesting to observe what a man does with it. While he can never escape the “didn’t know it was loaded” equation in terms of cataclysm or the unexpected gain of some other life form, he operates in a high zone level of survival potential.
    But here he is, self-determined, rational, his primary weapon, his mind, in excellent working order. What are his necessity instincts?
    Necessity, according to that very sentient if rapidly subject-changing article, the dictionary, is “the state of being necessary; that which is unavoidable; compulsion.” It also adds that necessity is “extreme poverty,” but we don’t want that. We are talking about survival.
    The compulsion mentioned can be re-evaluated in terms of the survival dynamic. That is interior in the organism and the race. And what is “necessary” to survival?
    We have seen and can prove clinically that there are two factors at work. The necessity of avoiding pain is a factor because, degree by degree, little things, not much in themselves, can amount to large pains which, compounded in that rapid geometric progression, bring on death. Pain is the sadness of being bawled out for poor work, because that may lead to being fired, which may lead to starvation, which may lead to death. Run any equation into which pain has entered and it can be seen that it reduces down to possible non-survival. And if this were all