The Landmark Forum

Buick6

too punk to drunk
Not sure what to make of this one - is it Scientology for Yuppies/Corporate drones in middlesence? I've come across people who have done it and speak highly of it, though these aren't like close friends of mine..I remember reading that Chuck Palahniuk did it, and based alot of his themes and style on it's regimen, especially in the book FIGHT CLUB.

I don't know if it's bad, and it takes it's cues literally from existentialism and on the other hand Heidegger. But it's inherently 'nebulous' nature is something that makes me quite skeptical of the whole deal, as is their hard sell. Wikipedia has some interesting (independent?) info on it, but still remains, it seems with a 'neither here nor there' final outcome on the whole organisation.

I pose this discussion, as I know there plenny of Dissensans out there who are deep thinkers, and prolly more trained in philisophy and critical thought, and was curious to know what some of you think of this nebulous 'self improvement' organisation. Cheers.
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
I've met people who've done it who don't seem insane, but the ones who actively pursue it, go to additional meetings, etc. are quite sinister, IME.

I had a brief contract working in a company of about 10 people in Auckland and maybe 3 or 4 employees had done it.. and man.. so much discussion about how to manipulate conversations to beat other people and so on... such adversarial, self-centred language. They also attended meetings where they would talk about who they unsuccessfully tried to get to attend the Forum, what the reasons for not attending were, and how to defeat those reasons next time. Unsurprisingly they had such terrible listening skills, which is a great irony, given what these people thought of themselves and the great skills they'd learned through the Forum.

The financial set-up grosses me out too. It costs a hell of a lot and the vast majority of those involved in the administration etc. are volunteers (enthusiastic recent Forum attendees), so the vast majority of the cash is going straight up to the person who set the whole thing up.

The Forum itself runs on incredibly long days, with very few breaks and so on, so it promotes exhaustion and therefore fragility, which I also consider quite horrible.

From memory, psych-wise it's based around the counselling practise of NLP (yep, the New Labour Party - no, wait, Neuro-Linguistic Programming). The gist of NLP is that if you rewrite your own "self-talk" you can achieve anything, that it's what we tell ourselves about ourselves that limits our being. Then you can use the same techniques to change people's views so that you can get money out of them. I think self-awareness is a far too sketchy concept to put much faith in this concept, it's just an extension of the philosophy of PR, that perception is reality...

Part of the Forum structure is plucking out some dark regret from your past that needs to be resolved, an issue that you get "on" (i.e. get stuck thinking about), and need to get off. Each attendee makes a commitment to take some specific course of action to sort it out. Among people I know who've done it this has ranged from saying sorry to an old friend, to forgiving an abuser, to flying across the world to tell an ex that you were wrong to break up (that one resulted in marriage, still going strong). With all people I know, good things have come from this aspect of it, but for me this is completely outweighed by everything else I've seen and heard.
 

mms

sometimes
melchior, is it really a scientology spin off?

do you know any of the deeper history of it?

Scientology is really interesting, the history of it and hubbard (who studied under crowley) is an interesting guy, the original idea of dianetics and self psychology which came around the same kind of time as critical thought about lsd in psychiatry etc.
As far as self help goes - it's really good, if you are the author of a self help book, leader of a group etc.
Self help nowdays almost always means, making or having cash too.
It used to be that in contrast churches and religion were free from direct financial gain (for followers anyway)
but even the church has got mixed up in prosperity christianity, and self help books that implement the bible for financial or business gain. Just step on any piece of london transport and you're really aware of the amount of people buying into this 'we have a special plan for you' 'you will succeed very soon just follow these instructions' books.
 
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Melchior

Taking History Too Far
mms said:
melchior, is it really a scientology spin off?

Hmmm. Actually, doing some looking, it appears I might have been a bit misinformed. IT's a very small one.

Michael more or less nailed how I feel about it - the culty "now you bring a firend to get a discount at the next level of our fantastic courses you can't live without" stuff makes me feel ill.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
The Landmark forum is in a certain way genius. The idea is very simple. One attends a seminar designed to engineer a carthartic experience. This is a genuinely carthartic experience, so far as it goes, and one will feel better as a result of it. One will not know why one feels better - taking notes is strictly prohibited - only that one does feel better, and that one can feel better again by going back - and indeed, one knows no other way at all that one could feel better - except by going back.

In this sense, the Landmark forum is a little bit like crack. After leaving a landmark seminar, all of the people who attended it and experienced how great it was, will then proceed to tell everyone they know how great it was, and encourage them to try it as well. There is no argument against these encouragements, since "you have not experienced it" - and the experience is understood to be the fundamental thing. As such, it is basically impossible to convince anyone who has attended the landmark forum that the landmark forum is not worth attending - except, of course, if one has attended oneself.

You could do this, but why would you? Nonetheless, landmark forum addicts will sometimes actually offer to pay your way for you to attend. They do genuinely believe they are onto something - they are not cynical in this sense. And, of course, the landmark forum does not particularly care who is paying, so long as someone is.

The general point is that this - like Scientology - is basically a corporate confidence-trick selling quick spiritual fixes to the vulnerable and desperate. I recall spending more than two months desperately pleading with a landmark-going friend of mine to get himself innoculated against this bullshit, because he was contagious, and acting as an agent for the fucking company, on the basis of motivations and manipulations he did not understand. Needless to say, I failed.
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
josef k. said:
The general point is that this - like Scientology - is basically a corporate confidence-trick selling quick spiritual fixes to the vulnerable and desperate. I recall spending more than two months desperately pleading with a landmark-going friend of mine to get himself innoculated against this bullshit, because he was contagious, and acting as an agent for the fucking company, on the basis of motivations and manipulations he did not understand. Needless to say, I failed.

Yeah they get pretty into it. But still, do they get the long-term benefit? The person I know is still the shlepper they were to begin with, hence the 'addiction' cycle and isn't a good measure of it's success. But shleppers who became high-powered type as a result of doing it. So far the only 'famous' person I can think of is Chuck Palahniuk.
 
An acquaintance of mine joined Landmark a year or so ago and has consistently maintained a terrifying level of enthusiasm about it ever since. It's gotten to the point where he has alienated many of his friends, but I enjoy it when he spouts. There's something about proselytisers that fascinates me. The bulging eyes. The full sincerity.

We've had more than a few arguments in our time. On one particular occasion I pointed out the simple contradiction between his commitment to bullshit relativism - ie there's no 'right' way to live your life - and his constant demand for everyone around him to join the fuck up to Landmark. There's nothing particularly staggering about this intellectual maneuver, right, but the guy was paralysed. He ended up saying that he had really enjoyed and 'learnt a lot' from our exchange but would have to end it because he was not on a high enough 'level' to continue the discussion.

"When do we get to the part where we can start thinking for ourselves, boss?"
"Not until after two more levels. Just keep on working! You're doing great!"

It's a pyramid scheme, but instead of promising you fool proof money making they're promising fool proof methods for increasing self-confidence.


Can you tell us more about the alleged Heidegger connection?
 

bassnation

the abyss
sixbillionbodies said:
We've had more than a few arguments in our time. On one particular occasion I pointed out the simple contradiction between his commitment to bullshit relativism - ie there's no 'right' way to live your life - and his constant demand for everyone around him to join the fuck up to Landmark. There's nothing particularly staggering about this intellectual maneuver, right, but the guy was paralysed. He ended up saying that he had really enjoyed and 'learnt a lot' from our exchange but would have to end it because he was not on a high enough 'level' to continue the discussion.

my father once had a debate with a jehovahs witness which ended with my father going through the bible and pointing out contradictions - the witness said "i'm going to leave now - this is clearly the devil speaking through you testing my faith"

cold hard rationality can't win against that - as soon as you make them doubt themselves, down come the shutters.
 

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
Arguing with Christians used to be my number one favourite hobby as a teenager, unfortunately I've started to feel a bit guilty about it since realising (this would have been unthinkable back then) that there are lots of Christians who are cleverer and nicer than me. Still, I look forward to the day when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on my door, they are legitimate targets.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Incidentally, Chuck Pahluniak...also Luke Rhinehart (he of diceman fame) is known to have written a basically positive book about EST...
 

Freakaholic

not just an addiction
I have been to the guest event. And it reaked of this other group that I have a little too much contact with for my own comfort. They are called "the Wright Institute for Better Living". Judith Wright recently wrote several books, and was on Oprah plugging one. A little digging shows that her and her husband used to be a licensed psychologist and a licensed social worker, but both have had their degrees revoked. They narrowly avoided a law suit because of this technicality.

What I know abou them is that they have this initial encounter retreat that basically works on teh same principals: fatigue, hunger, and emotional and psychological strain to break you down to a child-like state, where they then build you back up, however planting themselves in as the "parent figure", thus creating a dependency on them for your new future life. All under the guise of self-help, and, what i consider to be a true doctrine, that you are the only thing standing in your way.

Check out this link:
http://www.factnet.org/discus/messages/1/12278.html?1140970006

for some first-person testimonies.


My experience is that many of the people that flock to these things are just looking for another thing to blame for their problems. but instead of internalizing any message, they end up constantly finger-pointing and bickering about anything.

i worked for a company that was deeply involved with this organization, so much that they donated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of video and web production time, and yet still paid for every class they took, and made it mandatory for their staff members to take the class, and pay for it. Luckily, i wasnt staff. but it degraded the comapony into an unorganized, bickering, mess that, whenever a problem or criticism arose, it turned into an hour long assault on a person's character.

messy, messy stuff.
 

DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
Yeah, that's the review I had in mind too. I went to the library and got three Pahlaniuk books at once. I finished one and stopped in the beginning of the second and returned them. Then I read that review and agreed wholeheartedly. Palahniuk wrote a pissed off response, it's in the archives somewhere.
 

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
Yeah you can also read the letters they got in response to the review, it's hilarious (if unethical I suppose) the way they clearly cherry-picked the most inarticulate, ranting, misogynistic ones i.e. the ones that make Palahniuk fans look worst.
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
DigitalDjigit said:
Palahniuk is also a terrible writer.

Yeah I agree. i thought 'Survivor' was interesting, then I read 'Invisible Monsters' which was pretty wanky, then read 'fight club' coz I liked the movie. By the time I got to 'Choke' (which I bought as a remainder, it became evident this guy had wasted many hours of my psychic space.

I label him 'Harry Crews lite'. Crews did everything and more Palahniuk ever did, earlier, better, crazier, and humanistically, and the guy is a better writer to boot.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
mms said:
Scientology is really interesting, the history of it and hubbard (who studied under crowley) is an interesting guy,
No - he did some OTO training but that was just so he could filch money off of Parsons. Hubbard was a loser.

I know a guy who did Landmark training who doesn't proselytise, is very well balanced, just found it useful to him.
 
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