Facts, schmacts.

Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true. - Homer Simpson

After days of looking at this dumb chart, I’ve decided it’s BS. I can't believe it’s the first demonstration of "data" within the book. This does not bode well for subsequent chapters. How does one measure “potential”? How can you scientifically bucket someone into a happiness zone? Not that that stopped them from trying. Apparently a Clear operates daily in a strong Zone 4. Hubbard guesses that you, the unenlightened pee-on, is probably stuck at around 2.8. The zones don’t measure anything, they’re completely arbitrary. All these axes and zones add as much credibility as a couple of potted ferns. Yuck! Moving on.

The rest of this chapter was really, really hard to get through. Pleasure is good, pain is bad. Mankind suffers when it recedes from pleasure and pursues pain. Man is a self-determined organism, except when he is dependent upon the environment or other life forms for survival. Man can sometimes unknowingly limit his survival potential, something Hubbard calls the “didn’t know the gun was loaded” equation. I guess this would be the equivalent of like when early Americans over-hunted the buffalo and then died of starvation? Clears probably don’t do that though. Whatever, this is getting really frustrating and I’m still in Book One.

I am seriously questioning whether Hubbard understands the definition of the word “fact”. His blatant and repeated misuse of this pretty simple term is starting to piss me off.