How To Choose Your People by Ruth Minshull [back] How To Choose Your People a book by Ruth Minshull 1972 [word print version] Introduction Chapter 1 The Common Denominator Chapter 2 The Emotional Tone Scale Chapter 3 Apathy (0.05) Chapter 4 Making Amends (0.375) Chapter 5 Grief (0.5) Chapter 6 Propitiation (0.8) Chapter 7 Sympathy (0.9) Chapter 8 Fear (1.0) Chapter 9 Covert Hostility (1.1) Chapter 10 No Sympathy (1.2) Chapter 11 Anger (1.5) Chapter 12 Pain (1.8) Chapter 13 Antagonism (2.0) Chapter 14 Boredom (2.5) Chapter 15 Conservatism (3.0) Chapter 16 Interest and Enthusiasm (3.5.4.0) Chapter 17 Some Tips on Spotting Tones Chapter 18 Cliches to Live by—Or Should We? Chapter 19 The Battle of the Sexes Chapter 20 Meanwhile, Down at the Office Chapter 21 Groups Chapter 22 The Tone Scale and the Arts Chapter 23 How to Handle People by Tone Matching Chapter 24 Raising Tone Chapter 25 You and Me A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EMOTIONAL TONESINTRODUCTION Out in the Jungle I don’t know what occupied your mind when you were in the early teens; but I was usually engrossed in trying to top insults with my older brothers. When I bothered to think about it at all, I expected that somewhere in the process of growing up I’d learn how to choose people—how to tell the good guys from the bad ones. In the movies it was easy (those white hats); but I wasn’t acquainted with any cowboys. Trustingly, however, I assumed that if the movie people recognized the difference, surely my parents and teachers knew all about people and someday would share the secrets with me. But they didn’t. I grew up, more or less, and wandered out into the jungle without knowing the difference between a tiger and teddy bear. Probably, I supposed, there aren’t any tigers in real life anyway. I fell in love. Ecstatically. Deliriously. This was more exciting than devouring cotton candy or swinging on top of the ferris wheel. One week later (through a friend of a friend) I discovered that my handsome coastguardsman had a girl back home in Chicago. They planned to marry as soon as he was out of the service. I wept the tears that only the young know. How could he have been so deceitful? Why should he do this to me? And worst of all was my own betrayal of myself: Why didn’t I know he was that kind of person? It was a dangerous jungle—and I wasn’t yet prepared for it. I went to college. I learned four or five big words. I learned to give a speech while concealing the jellyfish tremoring inside me. I learned something important (I forget just what it was now) about a thing called "pi." And I learned how to balance a teacup on my knee while mouthing inanities. But even here, among the most well-meaning and erudite, no one could tell me how to choose my people—the people to love, hire, fire, follow, avoid, befriend, leave or trust. Out into the sophisticated world—business, social life, suburbia—still no answers, only questions all around me: Is this really love? Which club should I join? Do I want to work for this company? Should I support this charity? Is he a true friend? How can I get the customer to buy? Will he betray me? Is this a worthy cause? Should I take this teacher’s advice? At the same time, my friends were stumbling along too. Mark meets Kathy. He falls in love. She’s cute, smart, sexy. She nevers wears too much makeup; she’s into his kind of music; she likes the same things on her pizza. Everything’s going for them. Should he marry her and make little pizzas together? It appeared to me that if any tiny voice inside him posed these questions, no voice replied: How will she withstand future family crises? Will she ooze into a puddle or keep her strength? Will she stage tearful scenes when he must work late? Will she be afraid to move out of town if he’s offered an attractive transfer? Will she become a nagging harridan if he doesn’t make enough money? Will she ruin their children? Mark’s dad is no help. He’s preoccupied with his own troubles at the office: Should he hire this man? He dresses well, he’s not a communist, his sideburns are no longer than the company president’s and he’s the nephew of an old fraternity brother. On paper, he looks good. But how will he perform on the job? Can he work on his own initiative? Is he an idea man or a plodder? Will he inspire people or crush them? Can he follow through? Will he carry out orders correctly or make costly bungles? Will he pull or drag? I wasn’t the only one wondering: How do you figure people out? Early in 1951 a close friend gave me a book called Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, by an American writer and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard (who later founded the international Church of Scientology). This enlightening book exposed the major cause and remedy of man’s miseries. In addition, however, Ron Hubbard also reported his first research in an entirely new field of study: the classification and prediction of human behavior. Later in 1951 he published Science of Survival in which he expanded on this new science. Reading the book, I was amazed to learn that this man stripped off all social veneer and predicted exactly what to expect from any individual. He so thoroughly unmasked all the beasts of the jungle (yes, even the tigers in teddy bear clothing) that I was shaken and gratified at the same time. I’ve been acquainted with this material now for twenty-one years (a nodding acquaintance for the first seven years and a close one for the last fourteen). I use it in business and in personal life and find it consistently accurate and reliable. The only times it "failed" me were when I failed to use it. In this book I’d like to share my experiences in using Ron Hubbard’s data. When you finish you will know how to evaluate people correctly, what you can expect of them, and what to do about it all. Of course, you are already sizing people up (with greater or lesser success), so much of the material will be no surprise; you’ll recognize it. Other ideas, however, depart so radically from accepted social theories that even if you discovered them yourself, you may have repressed them. They don’t quite conform to what we heard in Sunday school or at Mother’s knee. They puncture some of our most comfortable, but weary, platitudes. I found out (and so will you) that the sweet, smiling person who never, never loses his temper is in worse shape than the man who occasionally flies into a rage, that the compulsive do-gooder is more destructive than the aggressive scoundrel who only looks out for himself, that the person who never cries (but accepts every loss as his "cross to bear") is nearer death than one who sobs. Don’t take my word for all this. Read the material. Observe for yourself. When you finish, I hope you’ll agree that once we possess adequate equipment to survive, exploring the jungle can be quite fun after all. Chapter 1 THE COMMON DENOMINATOR "The basic nature of Man is not bad. It is good. But between him and that goodness are fears, rages and repressions."— L. Ron Hubbard, "The Free Man," Ability 232 A wise person once said that no two people are exactly alike. For this we can be eternally grateful. People come in tall sizes, short sizes and assorted colors. There are varied backgrounds, experiences and people who enjoy molded plastic flamingos perched in their front yards. Despite obviously unique personalities, however, Ron Hubbard encountered one common denominator in everyone: emotions. Emotions! He must be talking about that neurotic woman screaming at the mouse, the child throwing tantrums when he can’t have a cookie, the frightened soldier who won’t go back to the battlefield, the wife sobbing hysterically that her husband doesn’t love her. What’s that got to do with you and me and the mild little bookkeeper down the street? We’re not emotional. That’s a derogatory word. As I read Ron Hubbard’s work, however, I began observing all the people I knew (when unavoidable, I even looked at myself). His statements all appeared to be true. Every person is clinging to some attitude about life—he finds it grim, frightening, regretful, maddening or wonderful—but his viewpoint is not governed by reasoning or intellect. It is determined by emotion. Ron Hubbard’s significant discovery revealed three important facts about emotions: 1. There’s a package of fixed responses that goes with every emotion. 2. Emotions fall into a certain order—going from grim to great. 3. There are layers of restrained emotions, formerly unrecognized. THE EMOTIONAL PACKAGE Accompanying each emotion is a complete, unvarying package of attitudes and behavior. Therefore, once we recognize that a person is in grief (whether temporarily or chronically), we can expect him to be lamenting: "I was betrayed. Nobody loves me. Things used to be better." We also know how he will behave in most situations. The rich and beautiful actress who takes a bottle of sleeping pills feels the same overwhelming hopelessness as the skid row bum sitting in the gutter hugging his empty bottle. Although using different stage settings and different costumes, they’re both reading the same lines. The person who’s looking at the world through apathy-colored glasses is close to death, no matter what his background or his present environment. Every comment, every decision, every action is colored by his apathy. THE ORDER OF EMOTIONS It was while researching methods for improving mental health that Ron Hubbard encountered a consistent pattern of responses as people advanced. Helping individuals erase the effects of painful past experiences, he found they often manifested apathy at first and as the work proceeded, they moved through certain emotional stages that always occurred in the same unvarying order for every person: grief, fear, covert hostility, anger (or combativeness), antagonism, boredom, contentment and well-being. This change from painful emotions to pleasant emotions was such a reliable indication of success that he began to use it as the basic yardstick of his progress with each person. He next found that he could plot these emotional responses on a scale, with the happier ones on the top and the miserable ones on the bottom. Soon it was apparent that every person is somewhere on this scale at all times, although he moves up and down as he experiences fortunes and misfortunes. It also became evident that the higher a person’s position on the scale of emotions, the better he survives. He’s more capable of obtaining the necessities of living. He’s happier, more alive, more confident and competent. He’s winning. Conversely, the lower the person drops on the scale, the closer he is to death. He’s losing, more miserable, ready to succumb. If we are planning a difficult camping trip through wild, uninhabited country, the emotional scale tells us we should not choose a companion who mopes around complaining that it all sounds too hazardous. We should take the fellow who’s looking forward to the trip. People low on the scale don’t look forward to things. The less willingly a person contemplates the future, the lower are his chances of surviving. For identification, Ron Hubbard gave the various emotions a name and a number as he arranged them in order. He called his final sequence The Emotional Tone Scale. Each emotional position is called a "tone." Just as every musical tone is a sound of definite pitch and vibration, so each tone on the emotional scale contains its unique identifying characteristics. It would be hard to play a piano if the keys were intermixed rather than in succession. Similarly, it’s nearly impossible to understand people and help them improve without an accurate scale to tell us exactly how high or low a person is on the emotional keyboard. The dividing line of the tone scale is 2.0. Above this point, the person is surviving well. Below this level, his life expectancy is much poorer. Using this line, we refer to the people above it as "high-tone" or "upscale." People below 2.0 are "low-tone" or "downscale." Whereas a high-tone person is rational, the low-tone person operates irrationally. The lower his tone, the more a person’s decisions and behavior are governed by emotional feeling, regardless of his education or intellect. RESTRAINED EMOTIONS When we hear of the staid, "respectable" bank president with a devoted family who unexpectedly embezzles a hundred thousand dollars and absconds to South America with a young belly dancer, we may ask: "Whatever was he thinking of?" That’s the trouble, of course. He wasn’t thinking. He was feeling. Emotions ruled him as they do almost everyone. Likely such a person would take us by surprise only because his emotional tone was a restrained one. Some emotions are obvious because they’re expressed. But Ron Hubbard observed that beneath every expressed emotion there lies a band of restrained emotions: (Enthusiasm) 4.0 ENTHUSIASM—expressed (Interest) 3.5 (Conservatism) 3.0 (Boredom) 2.5 ENTHUSIASM—restrained (Antagonism) 2.0 (Pain) 1.8 (Anger) 1.5 HOSTILITY—expressed (No Sympathy) 1.2 (Covert Hostility) 1.1 HOSTILITY—restrained (Fear) 1.0 FEAR—expressed (Sympathy) 0.9 (Propitiation) 0.8 FEAR—restrained (Grief) 0.5 GRIEF—expressed (Making Amends) 0.375 (Apathy) 0.05 GRIEF—restrained With the discovery of these subtle, restrained emotions, fitting like layers of a club sandwich between the expressed emotions, we now have a new classification of man’s many attitudes about life. None of this means that a person is locked permanently into any particular position. People can change. And sometimes a high-tone individual can fall sharply for a brief period. But if he is high-tone enough, he will bounce back. HOW YOU CAN USE THIS MATERIAL Once we know the basic characteristics of each emotion, we can meet a person for the first time and, within minutes, we can understand his present frame of mind. Longer observation will show us his most frequent (habitual) emotion. We will then know how well he’s surviving and whether he will be an asset or a liability in our relationship. We will know how well he can execute a job, how truthful he is, how accurately he can relay a message or follow orders, how he feels about sex and children and whether or not we would want to be stranded on a desert island with him. This is better than relying on whims and folksy prejudices handed down from Grandma. Actually, it’s the only possible way to choose your people. Chapter 2 THE EMOTIONAL TONE SCALE If you already despise somebody, you don’t need the tone scale to tell you there’s something wrong (with him, naturally), but it will give you a good reason for your feelings and provide an excuse for not inviting him to your next party. There are certain people we insist we love despite the fact that they continually disappoint us. As dinner congeals on the stove and the souffle quietly sinks into a gooey mess, we wonder, dejectedly, how we ever got mixed up with someone who doesn’t even think to call when he’s going to be late. It seldom occurs to us that we just might be expecting too much from those on whom we bestow our priceless affection. There are people who dwell in the twilight zone of our friendship. They seem nice enough—they always remember to send a birthday card and to wipe their feet at the door—but there is no joy in spending an evening with them. In the next few chapters we’re going to climb up through each level of the tone scale. With any luck, we should discover the entire cast of characters in our lives, and (at last!) we’ll know just what to expect from them (For quick reference there’s a condensed description of each tone inside the back cover). Before we get to the individual tones, let’s cover some general information about the scale. SOURCES Since every book must have a last page, and preferably one that is within comfortable shooting distance from the first page, I won’t try to include everything there is to know about the tone scale and emotions. The basic data in this book as well as the quotations (except where otherwise indicated) come from "The Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation," "The Hubbard Chart of Attitudes" and Science of Survival, by L. Ron Hubbard. I recommend them all for further study (see list in the back of the book). The examples are from my own forays into the jungle. UPS AND DOWNS People experience an emotional curve. That is, everyone fluctuates on the scale from hour to hour, day to day. He goes up if he wins the office pool. He slumps when he loses that big sale. He falls in love and soars to the top. His girl leaves him for another man and he drops to Grief. Young children often travel up and down with the speed of light. As they grow older, the high peaks are cropped off, the curve widens and they often settle into one tone (or narrow band) where they remain a large share of the time. Once in a while they drop and resettle as life bumps them about. The person we call high-tone doesn’t settle down on the scale. He maintains a high interest and enthusiasm for living. Although he may become upset and drop down-tone in a lowscale environment, he is resilient and recovers quickly once he is free of the influence. The high-tone person displays the emotion called for by the occasion. When he suffers a deep loss, he feels Grief. If he’s the victim of some underhanded trickery, he usually gets angry. He experiences the right emotion at the right time. So, the person who is surviving well fluctuates all over the scale; he’s volatile. The better his condition, the more mobile he is. When he gets mad, he’s really mad, but he gets over it. When he gets scared, he’ll get unscared. He may be unaccountably depressed once in awhile, but he’ll recover quickly. If you’re trying to improve a person, you’re not trying to take him off the scale (the so-called "emotionless" person is definitely on the scale). We improve someone most when we enable him to gain control, action, ability and experience with all of the tones. Whenever we mention a high-tone person having "control" over his emotions, there is always somebody around who insists: "Emotions are only true when they are spontaneous. Controlling emotions just wouldn’t be honest!" On the contrary, it is the low-tone person who is the real phoney; he doesn’t even experience the right emotion for the occasion. This objector is the same person who will likely weep at a wedding or laugh madly when someone falls down and breaks a leg. That’s honest emotion? When we call a person low-tone, we’re not talking about the boss who got mad the other day when he found the unfilled customer orders thrown into the wastebasket. This doesn’t make him a 1.5 (Anger tone). The 1.5 is a person who’s mad almost constantly. When we mention Fear, we don’t mean the hunter who runs when his gun jams as the bear charges him. We’re talking about a fixed condition—the inability to change one’s attitude and one’s environment. The able person can act and react; but the low-tone person reads the same lines for every scene in the play. This is aberration. All that’s wrong with a low-tone person is his inflexibility. When he gets frightened, can he let go of the fear? If a man gets mad and tells someone off, can he let go of his grievance? High-tone people bounce back upscale. Low-tone people stay chronically settled. Although they may shift a notch up or down, they never move out of the lower ranges for long. A NEW LOOK AT THE MEANING OF SANITY It’s easy to say that a man is mad if he insists he’s Napoleon or if he runs amuck in the streets killing people. But there is little doubt in the minds of intelligent people (particularly those in our young reform movements) that a more subtle madness permeates our whole culture today. We see a society that permits the indiscriminate destruction of people and environments (through wars and pollution), a society that pours millions into mental health "research" while institutions fill to overflowing and suicides increase. We… truncated (335,472 more characters in archive)