The primary corrective discovery about PR has to do with the ARC triangle of Scientology.

PR = public relations, a technique of communication of ideas.

This triangle is Affinity-Reality-Communication. If one corner (say A) is raised, the other two will rise. If one corner is lowered, the other two are as well.

A casual investigation of the activities and effects of “PR” as practiced in the first 70 years of the 20th century gives one ample data to regard “PR” with caution.

Thus with high affinity, one also has a high reality and a high communication. With a low affinity one has also a low reality and a low communication.

The subject is one which can be said to be dangerous in its incomplete stage of development or in the hands of inexpert or unscrupulous people.

With a high or low R one has a high or low A and C.

Thus we have three major liabilities in PR usage:

And so it goes. The whole triangle rises and lowers as one piece. One cannot have a low R and a high A and C.

1. It is an incomplete technology as developed and used up to 1970.

PR is supposed to be a communication technique. It communicates ideas. Suppose one were to try to communicate an out-the-bottom R. In such a case the communication would possibly at first reach, but then it would recoil due to its R.

a. The human mind was not a known field.

This is of course an advance in the mental technology of Scientology. It was not available to early pioneers of PR. So they talked (and still talk) mainly lies.

b. Any early technology of the human mind was perverted by the University of Leipzig studies and animal fixations of a Prof. Wundt in 1879 who declared Man a soulless animal subject only to stimulus-response mechanisms and without determinism.

Older PR practitioners preferred lies. They used circus exaggeration or black propaganda. They sought to startle or intrigue and the easiest way to do it was with exclamation point „facts“ which were in fact lies.

c. Further perversions entered upon the scene in the 1894 libido theory of Sigmund Freud attributing all reactions and behavior to the sex urge.

„Mental health“ PRs dreamed up out of whole cloth the „statistics“ of the insane. „Nine out of every 15 Englishmen will go insane at some period of their lives“ is a complete lie. Streams of such false statistics gush from PR lobbyists to get a quick pound from Parliament.

PR is essentially a matter of reaching minds. Therefore, the above three factors have given PR strange elements and bedfellows which have curtailed its development as a subject.

The stock in trade of PRs, whether hired by Stalin, Hitler, the I Will Arise Society, the US President or the International Bank, has been black, bald-faced lies.

Naturally you’d have to know something of the mind to handle PR. Yet if a PR man is operating not only without knowledge of the mind but with a corrupt idea of it (as in Wundt or Freud), his use of PR technique can spread a fantastic amount of aberration into the society and can result in an aberrated society. PR men operating in the “mass media” (press, radio, television, magazines and in lobbying parliaments) push strange mental ideas.

The US President has given 2 different figures of the percentage of increased government cost per year in 2 months. His PR man was trying to influence Congress.

2. Inexpert PR men can make a gruesome mess out of the subject and the society.

The „Backfire 8“ as the „Car of the Century“ and the parachute exhibition „record delayed drop“ and the ambassador's press conference on „Middle East Aims“ are all PR functions – and salted throughout with lies.

a. Working with an incompletely developed subject, yet using the powerful communication systems of the society, it is not only not unusual for the work of a PR to recoil on his own employers but is usual to bring them into decay.

You pick up a newspaper or listen in the street and you see PR-PR-PR – all lies.

3. PR lends itself to the use of unscrupulous persons and cliques.

A battle cruiser makes a „goodwill visit“ to a town it is only equipt to crush and you have more lies.

a. The extremists such as the Nazis and Stalinists saw in PR techniques the means of subjugating their own people, perpetrating horrors and

The tremendous power of newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and modern „mass media“ communication is guided by the PRs of special interests and they guide with lies.

bringing their opponents into disrepute. Such extremist groups were enormously assisted by PR techniques.

Thus PR is corrupted to „a technique of lying convincingly.“

b. Using PR technique to bring about disrepute of their imagined enemies, unscrupulous persons have brought about an atmosphere of war, crime and insanity on the planet.These are of course harsh words. But it is better to know all sides of a subject.

It makes a cynical world. It has smashed idealism, patriotism and morality.

PR practitioners of course spread PR about PR. But the use of black PR far exceeds its other uses in this year of 1970. Yet teachers of PR in the smoky cloister (smoke from marijuana) give us only the Sunday school version. According to them, PR is a nicey-nicey way of bringing good works to public notice and that is their favorite definition. In actual fact ten times as much PR work is done in getting rid of someone or something imagined to be dangerous to the PR’s employer.

Why?

Bribing newspapermen and “free-lance writers” to write horrible lies about a competitor, bribing or lying to congressmen or ministers or members of Parliament to get a law passed to enable a fast buck to be made and countering the ploys of the other firm’s PR men are the common duties of a working public relations employee.

When an enforced communication channel carries only lies, then the affinity caves in and you get hate. For the R is corrupted.

This scene doesn’t seem to be quite the same as PR as represented in the ivory skulls of its professors.It’s a PR world.

PR, dedicated to a false reality of lies, then becomes low A, low C and recoils on the user.

When you read the papers, books and watch the TV of the 20th century, it’s not a very nice world. Well, that’s PR at work.

So the first lesson we can learn that enables us to use PR safely is to KEEP A HIGH R.

The far right PRs against the far left. And in between, more moderate groups PR both.Every government department in England has a PR office. The beginning of the decline of the British Empire and the first British government “information office” are of similar date.

The more lies you use in PR the more likely it is that the PR will recoil.

The unsavory history of PR, its use to perpetuate questionable interests and cause needless and murderous quarrels must be confronted as part of the study of PR.

Thus the law

It is not for no reason that PR men are often of pitiful morals and degenerate character.

NEVER USE LIES IN PR.

The countless trillions of volts of radio and TV, the rivers of newsprint and pages tearing through presses, pour fantastic lies into the overwhelmed population of Earth.

The trouble with PR then was its lack of reality. A lie of course is a false reality

The prevailing tone of dismay and contempt across the world is stimulated and kept alive by PRs.

The trouble with PR was R!

So disabuse yourself of any idea of a pleasant scene in the field of PR.

Even if you are engaged in the promotion of the most worthwhile objects pushed by the most altruistic leader, PR work is done cheek by jowl with some pretty questionable characters whose objects are far from worthwhile and whose masters are about as altruistic as a rattlesnake.

In getting out a press release on a new can opener that opens cans easily, and you want to say „A child could use it,“ find out if it's a fact. Give one to a child and have him open a can. So it's true. So use the line and say what child. Don't call it the „Can Opener of the Century.“ It won't communicate.

Thus PR easily becomes a cynical activity. The PR deeds of the bad hats throw the field into disrepute and throw the whole world into a whirlpool of hate and decay.

Just because radios, TVs and press pour out does not mean they communicate. Communication implies that somebody is reached.

So in entering or studying this field, do not walk into it like a wide-eyed virgin making an incautious visit to a military brothel.

Don't tell a lie to city officials when the truth is just as easy to tell. Why go to all the work of dreaming up a lie? If you do, it will weaken you if it is found out that it is a lie. Now you do have a PR problem with the „official public.“

There is no reason to be disillusioned if one does not start out with illusions.

Any lie will either blunt the C (communication) or end the C off one day with revulsion.

PR is a partially-developed technique of creating states of mind in different types of audiences or publics.

PR can be used or abused.

Handling truth is a touchy business also. You don't have to tell everything you know – that would jam the comm line too. Tell an acceptable truth.

Thus before proceeding any further with the subject, it was necessary to restudy the subject and find out what was wrong with it, add it to the subject and thus make it less dangerous to use.The liabilities of PR, as taught and used before 1970 were

Agreement with one's message is what PR is seeking to achieve. Thus the message must compare to the personal experience of the audience.

A. It inevitably recoiled in greater or lesser degree to the harm of its user.

So PR becomes the technique of communicating an acceptable truth – and which will attain the desirable result.

B. It had long repute as a carelessly or badly used subject, full of failures.

If there's no chance of obtaining a desirable result and the truth would injure, then talk about something else.

C. It is normally used into the teeth of competitive PR.

PR is employed to obtain a result desired by the PR and his group.

Unless these objections could be nullified or new discoveries and developments could be accomplished, the basic techniques of PR were about as safe as a cocked Spanish pistol — ready to blow up its user long before it hit anyone else.This is what has been done with PR in our hands:

Or it is employed to cancel out the undesirable PR of others.

1. Its more dangerous points have been located.

Thus there is offensive and defensive PR.

2. A full study of its texts is required.

In defending against hostile PR, once more it is the R that counts. Sun Tzu in his book about warfare gives several types of agent. One of these is the „dead agent“ because he tells lies to the enemy and when they find out they will kill him.

3. It is designed now for use that is beneficial as well as offensive and defensive.

Hostile (or counter-PR) is usually the usual fabric of lies.

Thus the standard texts of PR have to be studied and studied well. And they must be studied WITH THE ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENTS KNOWN AND GIVEN HIGH IMPORTANCE.

If one finds out the lies being told and documents just one as being false, he has made counter-PR recoil. His hearer will never believe him again. He's dead.

Only then is it safe to use PR techniques. Otherwise PR activities are almost a complete liability and will lead to trouble.

In the war between psychiatric hostile PR and the truth of Scientology, the „dead agent“ caper has a field day. Psychiatric PR has been lying for 20 years. Documented, the fact of these lies are lies is killing off psychiatry.

In this series we will bring PR up-to-date from the liabilities which exist in its purely PR college textbook practice.

You understand, it's not one PR's word against another's. It's one PR's documents against the other PR's lies! That is correct defensive PR.

So you see that using out-R PR can be very dangerous.

If one is trying to PR an abuse into decay (a dangerous activity in itself), he obtains the desirable result by documenting TRUTH. But using the „dead agent“ caper is quite enough almost always.

The use of R not only involves truth, it involves acceptable truth and that involves the fixed opinions of another or others and their experience. All this is contained in the subject of REALITY.

What is the R of another or others?

This involves SURVEYS.

Then you know what truth he or they will accept.

Imagination in PR is not limited at all. It takes lots of imagination. But the imagination should be devoted to how the truth is made acceptable to the R of others and how the comm is delivered.

A totally imaginary statement or story is quite useful so long as it is known to be imaginary and not passed off as truth.

In a PR world truth is the almost unknown commodity. This world is full of the „noise“ of many lies, many babbles, many old fixations and hates.

But truth has comm value. All the lies will dead-end someday.

A (affinity) supports the R and C.

Therefore PR which seeks to incite hate will not have the C value of a message that carries actual affinity.

But affinity can also be falsified and in the PR world too often is.

A person who is sane has a high ARC value.

So the PR who is sane has a high potential. And those who have corrupted their A, R and C into a hole, wind up on the bottle or beating their dogs or cynical beyond belief.

Serving mad masters, a PR hasn't much chance.

So there is a technique known as public relations. And it has the high liability of abuse through lies and the degrade of its practitioner.

But if one strictly attends to the values of truth and affinity, he will be able to communicate and can stand up to the strain.

Knowing this, PR becomes a far more useful and mature subject.