Ethics officer (Scientology)

According to the Church of Scientology, ethics may be defined as the actions an individual takes on himself to ensure his continued survival across the dynamics. It is a personal thing. When one is ethical, it is something he does himself by his own choice."

According to founder L. Ron Hubbard's teachings, Scientology ethics is predicated on the idea that there are degrees of ethical conduct.

The Church's official position declares that "(T)he logic of Scientology ethics is inarguable and based upon two key concepts: good and evil", and goes on to state that "nothing is completely good, and to build anew often requires a degree of destruction" and "to appreciate what Scientology ethics is all about, it must be understood that good can be considered to be a constructive survival action".

In order to make ethical decisions that affect others around them, Scientologists are expected to use statistical measurement to assess the "measurement of survival potential". The Church's official website on ethics explains that "with an understanding of how to compile, graph and compare statistics, the Scientologist is amply equipped to determine exactly what condition an activity is in, and thus exactly what steps he must take in order to better that condition."

Hubbard stated that all Scientology organizations need to keep their statistics of production up, and that Ethics action must be brought against the staff member responsible for the particular statistic should it be continually down.

"Example: a typist gets out 500 letters in one week. That's a statistic. If the next week the typist gets out 600 letters that's an UP statistic. If the typist gets out 300 letters that's a DOWN statistic.... the purpose is to keep production (statistics) up."

According to The Scientology Handbook, the Scientology method of statistics can, and should, be applied to individuals, groups, organizations, and any production activities inside and outside Scientology. Hubbard prescribes a very specific method of plotting statistics on graphs, and then for analysis of these graphs in terms of five levels of "Ethics Conditions". The main categories for these conditions are:

According to The Scientology Handbook, however, the complete set of conditions is as follows (ranked from highest to lowest)[1]:

In 1965, Hubbard issued the policy letter HCOPL 1 Sep 1965 (reissued 5 Oct 1985) entitled "Ethics Protection". In it, he states that "Ethics actions are often used to handle down individual statistics. A person who is not doing his job becomes an Ethics target" and goes on to detail how a Scientologist can protect himself from Ethics punishment by being more productive and keeping statistics up:

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