HCOPL: Ethnic Surveys (1988)

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex
HCO POLICY LETTER OF II SEPTEMBER 1988

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PR Series 15
Marketing Series 23
ETHNIC SURVEYS

(Taken from LRH tape 6910C2I, Welcome to the Sea Org Tape No. 5, “It’s a PRO World,” and from LRH notes.)¹

Refs: HCO PL 5 Feb. 69 II PR Series 35 PRO ACTIONS
HCO PL 12 Nov. 69 PR Series 38 APPEARANCE AND PRO
HCO PL 11 Dec. 69R PR Series 40 Rev. 16.9.88 APPEARANCES IN PUBLIC DIVS

Long ago in space opera they taught that if you knew the buttons of any culture you could control it and if you didn’t know them and use them you got chaos.

You have to figure out what the people in an area are beating the drum for. This is known as ethnics. It’s the mores and customs; it’s what do the people believe, It’s what is right and what is wrong—the solution of good conduct. Ethnic values in an area consist of what the people consider wonderful, good, bad, awful, infinitely valuable, valuable, worthwhile, unacceptable, not wanted and hateful.

You are at risk, always, operating in an area where you do not know the ethnic values.

If you are going to control or govern or have influence upon an area, you have to make ethnic surveys. You have to find out what is most liked and what is next most liked and what is considered bad and what is considered totally evil. When you’ve got the lists of those things, you know the control buttons of the society.

ETHNICS AND THE ORG

What is “good conduct” in the area where you are operating? If you think you can answer this without doing ethnic surveys, that’s your first mistake. What is considered good conduct today often has very little to do with what was good conduct yesterday. When you preconceive the ethnic values of a society or base them upon what you read in their press, you make mistakes—because they don’t know how to conduct an ethnic survey in the first place.

You do an ethnic survey by asking questions and looking into books and backgrounds of religions. By going out on a broad scale basis and sampling enough of the population, you can find out what the current ethnic is or what the people’s basic ethnics really are. By noting the tone level reactions on ethnic survey questions, you can determine the correct tone level to use in your dealings with that public.

Ethnic surveys should be done to find out what the people like most and what they like least and to discover what they consider important about their own area or way of life. You could survey the people in the area on a description of Scientology (not using the word “Scientology”) and get their reactions to its description: the data you get on what would be wrong and right with Scientology, its practice and organizations could then be used as an ethnic. One should also look at the ethnics of Scientologists and find out where they agree with the ethnics of the public. Someplace between a group of Scientologists and a public which has been taught that they are animals, there is some point of agreement which would assist dissemination—what the org would actually agree it was trying to do and what the public would consider that it was all right for the org to do and very laudable to do.

Once you know the ethnic values of an area, you can put together a code of performance for action or a mock-up. Then you would get this critically looked at and evaluated (as a new survey), and then put it into operation. That is putting in your reality with the public.

MAJORITY OPINION

Ethnic samplings have got to be very broadly done. You are only interested in the majority. When doing ethnic surveys, you’re studying human beings in the mass, not their personal prejudices. You can’t just listen to one newspaper reporter and one prejudiced politician—that’s too small a sampling. You are not interested in the small percentages such as 11 percent, 2 percent or I percent, as they don’t represent the majority.

Echo majority local opinion and you are very right in their opinion.

SUMMARY

It is a maxim in any actuality such as ours that you have to know the buttons on which people respond and buttons which they abhor.

If you (a) back up your PR actions 100 percent with good, sound ethnic surveys, (b) get your programs, your mock-ups and your actions re-analyzed after they are planned and (c) then follow those planned actions and programs, you can take the world!

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
Compilation assisted by
LRH Technical Research
and Compilations

Notes