When I was in high school, I occasionally ate in the cafeteria, and sat with some random girls. I didn't know them until I sat down next to them and introduced myself. These girls weren't particularly attractive or smart or anything else. But they were available to talk to.

I took advantage of the situation by asking the girls various questions about religion, purposes in life, philosophy and the like. They didn't know me from Adam, so I had nothing to lose or hide. I didn't want anything other than information from them. And I wasn't asking them about anything which should be embarrassing. So they had no reason to obfuscate or hide anything.

One of my favorite questions was what their purposes in life were. Occasionally, you'd get some answer you knew wasn't sincere. I took no prisoners, so when I heard an answer like that, I'd logically extend their purpose to its end.

"So what's your purpose in life?"

"To spread the word of Jesus."

"Okay, so you intend to be a minister or pastor?"

"Well no, not really."

"So that's not really your real purpose, then?"

"Well..."

As it turns out, almost none of them could define an exact or even approximate purpose for their lives. Not one. One could make allowances for the fact that these were high school girls, but the answers were all more or less what I expected from the outset.

Then I'd go after their religions. Not to attack them, but to find out where their religious conceptions originated from. In virtually every case, none of them had any logical reason for believing what they did. It was all based on "faith" or something akin to that. Worse, perhaps, none could determine any origin of their religious beliefs, other than their family or their parents. This meant that none of them had sat down and seriously considered any of the other world religions which might have more likely satisfied their religious strivings, if they even had any.

I'd question them about their personal philosophies, which mostly garnered embarrassed silences or deer-in-the-headlight looks.

(I'll admit that occasionally those girls would respond with something like, "to fall in love and raise a family". At that point, I would question that girl no further. This was a perfectly reasonable and honest answer for a high school girl. A lot of them probably ended up doing precisely that, whether they answered my questions with anything reasonably or not.)

Again, most of the answers I received were in line with what I expected. I mostly found this rather sad. I could expect that most of my generation, male or female, of whatever age, would respond in mostly the same way. As it happens I normally hung out with the smart kids in my school, so I would expect a larger percentage of those folks to respond with something more intelligent. But even then, a "larger percentage" wouldn't necessarily be anything like an abundance.

Years later, having found Scientology, I had a chance to analyze the people and the answers a lot more closely.

Essentially, you had a world full of people (really, do we expect most of the people on that bell curve to answer differently?) who were unaware of any reason they were here. They were here to respond to the randomity of life. In other words, they had no overriding purpose for being here. They were just here to play the game of life, without any concept of where that game would take them. They would simply be hit with varying degrees of randomity, and respond in whatever way their cases dictated.

These were push-button people. Environment does X, you respond as expected with Y. Rinse and repeat. And I'm betting that most of my generation (at that time, people born in the late 50s) would be in exactly the same position. As for latter generations, well, you've seen what's happened to the world since then. What do you think?

Those are the people who surround you on this planet. LRH was probably right when he mentioned that most people had some idea in the back of their minds that there was something wrong here. I think most of them are looking for answers better than what they have. And occasionally one of them pops up the awareness scale a bit, and goes looking for a better idea or some answer other than whatever their religion or philosophy delivers to them. And if we were lucky, they'd walk into an Org or send in a "more information" card.

It's no wonder the world is in the condition it's in.

If you think you're one of the people I'm talking about here, might I suggest taking a run at doing an admin scale and having it checked by someone whose reasoning abilities are at least as good as yours or better? Consider it like a cram or a course drill. It can be quite an enlightening experience, which informs your future life in a way nothing else quite could. No one expects you to be in the business of saving the world at the end of the exercise. Maybe a good purpose for you is to pick up the trash, and you happen to be in that business. Good for you!