The Big Auditing Problem

In Professional Auditor's Bulletin, No. 119, 1 September 1957, "The Big Auditing Problem", Hubbard explains how only Scientology auditors are capable of overcoming the South African natives' inability to learn.

"The Scientology religion is based exclusively upon L. Ron Hubbard's research, writings and recorded lectures —
all of which constitute the Scriptures of the religion"

What happens to Scientology and Scientologists in a world of this character? What happens to us? Why should we know what we know and know it well, and so on? That's because your basic attitude toward the world at large will have to be more and more an auditor's attitude toward a preclear if you are going to accomplish any survival at all. To get anybody to do anything will probably require an auditor here in the near future. I will give you an idea of this.

In North Africa they had the Arab with the gun and whip. He could force people to do things with a gun and a whip and he accomplished a tremendous amount of extermination, but he certainly didn't advance that civilization very much. In South Africa they had a bit of the whip but everybody just gave up. The South African native is probably the one impossible person to train in the entire world — he is probably impossible by any human standard. I'll give you an example. A South African native is being shown how to sow crops and he has a basket, and he's got some seed, and he's walking along back of the harrow disc — and he is supposed to throw seed out this way: seed out this way, seed out that way, seed out this way. A white man is riding a little tractor that's pulling the disc and scraping the soil for the seed. And this scene was enacted and was witnessed and was told to me with considerable hilarity as some kind of an idea of learning rate. The white man was sitting on the little tractor pulling the harrow, the native along behind him, sowing the seed straight down in handfuls on the ground. The white man got off the tractor, came back to the native, took the basket away from him, put his hand in the basket, threw it to the right, put his hand in the basket, threw it to the left, and gave it back to the native. And the native waited, the white man got on the tractor, drove along, and the native took a handful out of the basket and threw it straight on the ground. So the white man got off the tractor, came back, took the basket away from the native, showed the native, throw it to the right, throw it to the left, gave it back to the native, took his seat again on the tractor, the native followed along behind, took handfuls and threw it straight on the ground! And this went on for a very long time. The native never did throw any handfuls of seed to the right and left. Never did. That is farming in South Africa.

Now did anything ever come along and change that? Yes. Man had to cease to be Homo Sapiens and had to become Homo Scientologicus in order to accomplish any action that was anywhere near efficient in South Africa. And we have had some auditors  in South Africa who have actually succeeded in training natives easily and well and have successfully managed large organizations there. That's certainly something. Now with these people it was still possible to get something done. But what had this native done? Was this native what we think of as primitive stock? No, we make a great many mistakes. We say a child is in a "native state." A native is in a "native state." People are in a barbaric condition and then they grow up and become civilized. How do we know that this barbaric condition isn't a retrogression from a highly civilized condition back to an Only One  category? How do we know that isn't true? How do we know that that native didn't at one time achieve a great civilization of culture which then collapsed on him and he went back into a state of being a barbarian?

But the point is, is this true that a native is in a clearer  state, and is it true that it requires Livingness  to advance somebody in that crude state up to a condition of ability? No, that is not true. The child, the primitive, the native, are in retrograded states. They are worse off than somebody who is at a civilized or thinking or analytical level.

Only Scientologists are capable of teaching the unteachables:

The odd part of it is that a Scientologist can educate people that no one else has ever been able to educate. How do they do it? By auditing them. One of the main things that rises in auditing is IQ, which tells you of course, secondarily, that learning rate goes up. What is IQ but relative cognitionability  ?

-L. Ron Hubbard, Study Tapes, "Education", a lecture given on 25 October 1956

In a lecture (part of the Study Tapes) of 6 August 1964 entitled "Study: Gradients and Nomenclature", Hubbard further explains the difficulty Africans have learning (except when taught using Scientology study tech):

So, you can make with the greatest of ease the mistake of entering a gradient too high.

A multimillion pound activity was carried on in Africa teaching a number of tribes down there "Soil Erosion: The Techniques of Preserving Soil and Preventing Erosion." Parliament up here was just appropriating money, along with peanuts, and so forth. It was back in the days when we were all comrades. And they were appropriating money for these groundnuts—peanuts to you Americans—which never grew and nobody could do anything with them after they'd grown them because there was other things they did it with, see? Same time they were pouring this flood of money, as a support program to groundnuts—they got into soil preservation and preventing soil erosion. And they poured the money into this and they poured people down there and they had people in an airlift going down to Central Africa to solve these staggering and fantastic problems they were having in trying to teach these natives how to not erode soil. And the native was taking this in just about the way oil takes in water. I'm sure he was being polite and gentlemanly about listening but brother he was really paying no attention.

And it took a Scientologist in the middle of the program to straighten it out. He did it with gradients which we already knew about. He just decided that the government had cut in too late. The native didn't have any reason to not erode soil. Well, there was all of Africa full of soil—how come we were preserving it? It seemed to be the most bountiful substance he ever had anything to do with. And this dropped back to the fact that he had no idea of future. So this Scientologist sat down patiently and ran around and wrote them up something that they used in the program and one has never heard about it since, so it must have been very successful. No more billions are being promoted in that direction anyway.

Just this: That you had to teach the native that there was such a thing as the future and that his future welfare of his children and tribe depended to a large degree on his still having pastures to graze and areas to grow things in. And they taught them this very carefully and considerable enthusiasm greeted soil erosion.

Hubbard's opinion of "natives" is uncannily similar to apartheid philosophy: simple, ignorant, child-like, and needing the white man's civilization to improve their lot.

Excerpts from South African Medical Journal articles during apartheid purport to document inherent differences in "races" and the inferiority of black "races" to European "races." One article from 1960 stated, "the most striking traits of the African are the recognition of the importance of physical needs (nutrition and sexuality), and a liveliness of the emotions counterbalanced by their short duration. The African essentially lives in the present (in a sense, like a child) and his behavior is largely motivated by influences and impulses of the moment."

-Human Rights and Health: The Legacy of of Apartheid