A common sense guide to better living

We got a Scientology booklet on our doorstep the other day. It made for entertaining and saddening reading. Saddening because it was all about striving to be a better, more moral, caring person. This makes me sad because it's what I used to do and what I see most people doing, and it's an overwhelming, disheartening task. When I read things like this they ring with naivity:- "Now what do you suppose would happen if one were to try and treat those around him with justness, loyalty, good sportsmanship, fairness, honesty, kindness, consideration [etc] . . . ?It might take a little while but don't you suppose that many others would then begin to try to treat one the same way? . . . . If one is not like that already, it can be made much easier by just picking one virtue a day and specializing in it for that day."1 A kid might buy that, but adults should have learned better.

And the entertainment? Well here's a choice selection:

The way to happiness does not include murdering or your friends, your
family or yourself being murdered.

[E]ven if one were simply to frown when people do things to mess up the
planet, one would be doing something about it.

In some countries, old people, the unemployed do not just sit around
and go to pieces [sic]: they are used to care for the gardens and parks and forests,
to pick up the litter and add some beauty to the world.

There are many things one can do to help take care of the planet. They
begin with the idea that one should. They progress with suggesting to others
they should.

If others do not help safeguard and improve the environment, the way to
happiness could have no roadbed to travel on at all.

Stealing things is really just an admission that one is not capable
enough to make it honestly. Or that one has a streak of insanity. Ask a
thief which one it is: it's either one or the other.

. . . That is the alley to the trash bin of incompetence.

The new model eggbeater or washing machine, the latest year's car, all
demand some study and learning before they can be competently operated. When
people omit it, there are accidents in the kitchen and piles of bleeding
wreckage on the highways.

Movie stuntmen who don't practice first get hurt. So do housewives.

1 LR Hubbard, The Way to Happiness: A Common Sense Guide to Better Living (L. Ron Hubbard Library, 2007)