Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
elena
()
Date: October 30, 2006 12:11AM
Quote
turambar
The name "Hubbard" gives me massive dyspepsia, but if that was his good idea, then I'll have to sigh and admit he had one. But I doubt it was his idea. And whether he thought it up himself or read it somewhere, automatically rejecting any idea on the off chance that it might have come out of scientology. If Hubbard had invented the spoon and ice cream sandwich, would you only eat gelato with chopsticks?
Oh come on....
Of course L. Ron Hubbard didn't "think this up." It's been common knowledge since men walked upright that most of us feel bad about things we've done or that were done to us in the past. And, there have always been charlatans, witch doctors, and father-confessors willing to sell us relief or absolution paralleling the genuine medical/therapeutic types who would have liked to find legitimate ways to relieve us of the toxic or neurotic grief or shame. The propensity to mourn, to pine, or to regret with the possession of a conscience is part of higher brain functioning. Most of us suffer in some way. Most great art is tapped from this massive well of despair. It's one of the major characteristics that distinguishes us from animals, though there are animals who have appeared to carry grief or longing for a lifetime and we have all heard of animals dying from what we assume to be a broken heart.
All L. Ron Hubbard did was come up with a pseudo-psychotherapeutic gimick excercise he called "auditing," which, except for the E-Meter, wasn't much more that sitting with someone and talking about your problems. He pinched some of his "theories" from Freud and from the proven benefits of "talk therapy" and abreaction. The fact was that his counsellors were neither trained nor educated in any traditional or conventional way. Same with Werner Erhard's "coaches." They are pretending to be proficient in psychotherapeutic techniques but most of them have no formal education or background. The fact that both L. Ron Hubbard and Werner Erhard were able to purchase "experts" doesn't mean much except that some "experts" are for sale, some aren't really experts, some can be seduced by the various tricks and tactics of mind-control, and some may have been fooled by the "conventional" superficial content and blinded themselves to the rest.
It appears, for all our labor, our pondering, and our willingness to suffer, there has always been a large segment of the population who will opt for the quickie-cure, the instant-fix, or the couple-of-weekends-plus-a follow-up "mind cure." What would you think of a "program" that offered an "instant" cure for the painful feelings of remorse a criminal with some conscience might feel? Most of us refrain from bad behavior because we don't want to suffer the consequences or feel the sting of regret, neither of which most sociopaths take into account as they go about their business taking advantage of others. They are not burdened by these feelings. Programs like Landmark, which were started by sociopaths like Werner Erhard, turn out "graduates" who resemble the "founder" in the respect that they are more sociopathic, more narcissitic, and more conceited. Do you really think this would be a better world with more assholes walking around?
Ellen
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
skeptic
()
Date: October 30, 2006 02:21AM
Quote
turambar
The whole point of the conversation at the mike, by the way, is to get you to do some introspection, understand things you do or don't do, and move beyond those behaviors by understanding them thoroughly. Only some of the people choose to go to the microphone, but everyone's there to listen and virtually everyone finds something useful in what they hear. A fact that was lost in the French documentary, and one that would have been overlooked by the reporter, is that the person at the mike feels well-supported by everyone in the room, including the forum leader.
Support. Another concept that was twisted in the lgat I went through. I remember thinking that the bludgeoning I was getting wasn't my idea of support.
The so-called support is to get the participant to comply and conform.
So, yes, the audience and the leader [i:ddfe0ec9a4]are[/i:ddfe0ec9a4] in support of the person at the mike. They support that person's re-formation into an lgat clone, who will then go out and bring in more $$$$$$$$ for the lgat.
The behaviors they want you to "move through" are the ones that will interfere with your selling of the lgat/course.
Not my idea of support!
skeptic
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
skeptic
()
Date: October 30, 2006 02:31AM
Quote
turambar
And to answer a question you haven't asked yet, but I think it seems natural to wonder, I haven't done much volunteering with Landmark, and I don't expect to do so in the near future. I have a startup business to nurse along, and other things to do, so my time is limited.
LE hasn't created a breakthrough in you regarding your concept of time?
I don't know about LE but the lgat I was with informed us that time and money were not real. Translation: not good enough "excuses" to not sign up for their course. They played with and dismissed those "considerations", as they called them. In true lgat form, they redefined money and time, to suit their purposes.
skeptic
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
blarney36363636
()
Date: October 30, 2006 03:10AM
That is EXACTLY what Landmark says to try to get you to sign up for more courses. You're right. "Money and time" aren't good enough excuses. There really is no good enough excuse. They ask you to "be unreasonable" (jargon) and they say that "whatever you put into the course (money and time) you will get back in return out of results you want in your life." I bet Scientology and other LGATs say something very similar.Quote
LE hasn't created a breakthrough in you regarding your concept of time?
I don't know about LE but the lgat I was with informed us that time and money were not real. Translation: not good enough "excuses" to not sign up for their course. They played with and dismissed those "considerations", as they called them. In true lgat form, they redefined money and time, to suit their purposes.
skeptic
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
critical_thinker
()
Date: October 30, 2006 07:33AM
Quote
turambar
critical_thinker:Quote
Regarding not bringing lawsuits, we all know that was due to a change in law (Donato versus Moldow), whereby Rick Ross amended his defense to the tort of libel to include the Communications Decency Act. If Rick were concerned about the truth, he would not have amended.
critical_thinker, citation for other readers?
Citation:
[culteducation.com]
Page 11 to 13: The January 2005 Change in Law -- Donato Versus Moldow
"Notably, in February 2005, after Donato was published, counsel for defendants requested that Landmark stipulate to permit defendants to amend their answer to assert the CDA as an affirmative defense."
This decision allows Rick Ross to suppress any positive post and allow the most negative and inflammatory opinions without consequences, as he has immunity for the things other people post under the CDA.
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
elena
()
Date: October 30, 2006 08:51AM
Quote
critical_thinker
This decision allows Rick Ross to suppress any positive post and allow the most negative and inflammatory opinions without consequences, as he has immunity for the things other people post under the CDA.
Unless you mean not allowing cults to post long diatribes of propaganda, their own links and pages of advertisements, or repetitive defenses that have been posted thousands of times in cyberspace, you are WRONG. Most "postive" posts are allowed because they usually provide the most damning evidence against cults. Cult members are their own worst advertisement - they put out for all to see how illogical and how lame most cult reasoning is, esepecially when they try to defend the indefensible - sort of like Ann Coulter defending Rush Limbaugh's mockery of Michael Fox. It's laughable and it shows them up for what they are. Yours, for instance - what is it about free speech or the freedom of ~self-expression~ that you don't like? We are not shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater here. If you have a point, make it. But be prepared to be countered. This isn't the hotel-ballroom where YOU can control the conversation.
Ellen
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
turambar
()
Date: October 30, 2006 12:37PM
Quote
turambar
I still go up to my old summer music camp occasionally to wash dishes, for the same reason. I think I've scrubbed toilets up there too.
Quite an honor. (add nauseum) :roll: :roll:
Quote
IT IS A FOR PROFIT ORGANIZATION!!!!! - [i:2f57dc21e3]Hellooooo[/i:2f57dc21e3]. They can afford to have hired staff to clean toilets, wash dishes, etc. You are so honored to clean the toilet for an organization that isn't even run by experts???!!!! What is wrong here? :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
I think what's wrong here is the automatic assumption that for-profit organizations cannot have or should not have a volunteer component. Sometimes you start a business for which you'd like to make a profit and it doesn't work out that way, but the business still serves well-enough as a public service that people dive in and volunteer to make it work. Summer camps and bike shops often fit that description. Perhaps you see yourself as non-profit-ish but you'd like to be relatively unhindered regarding your reinvestment of profits if you ever make any. OpenBSD.com, Firefox.com and many other public source software (and recently, hardware) companies fit that description. Landmark probably falls in between, but I don't really care where they fall as long as they offer a service I want for a price I can afford.
I've organized two non-profits and five for-profit companies. They have differed widely in their business models, and at least one that was organized for-profit depended on (from the outset) almost entirely volunteer labor.
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
turambar
()
Date: October 30, 2006 01:26PM
Quote
rrmoderator
turambar:
See [www.culteducation.com]
Landmark attempted to hide behind Donato vs. Moldow.
The fact is Landmark's lawsuit was only partly impacted by this legal decision, which specifically only affected claims it made regarding the message board.
Landmark made many other and more serious claims regarding "product disparagement," which had nothing to do with the message board.
Without commenting in favor of either party, expressing opinions on one's own message board puts one in an interesting position. If one makes a potentially false or libelous allegation, is one potentially legally liable or not?
You can be offended by Landmark's suit against you, but I would say that the continual allegation by the moderator that Landmark is a cult on a website entitled "cult education forum" is probably the kernel of their dissatisfaction. You can certainly say that the original EST was ridiculously offensive in its overall treatment of participants, that many holdovers from EST reflect very badly on Landmark, and that some of the Landmark Forum Leaders definitely push at least slightly past the boundaries of gentle treatment in their question to make people admit what they perceive as "the truth". And as fallible human beings, they're sometimes wrong in their perceptions.
And as a fallible human being, your perceptions can also be wrong or out of date. The days of virtual imprisonment, long days with no breaks, locks on the doors, lack of access to meals or medication and lack of bathroom breaks were rightly deemed beyond unnecessary and dropped long ago. As someone who suffers from hypoglycemia, I snuck back to a food stash in the back of the Forum roughly once every couple of hours for the entire three days, so that wasn't an issue.
90% of my reason to post on this forum was to refute the allegation that Landmark Education is some sort of "cult". I found that to be just silly, and laughable if it didn't have such strong potential to scare people into running away from friends or family that have taken the Landmark Forum or from taking the LF themselves. Virtually everyone I met from my particular class had objections to many of the faults that people have mentioned on this forum, but overall still felt that it was great despite its faults.
Quote
Currently Landmark is attempting to keep the France 3 documentary off the Internet. It appears that this effort at censorship has failed.
Anyone interested can now "experience" firsthand what is wrong with the Forum by watching one held not long ago in Paris.
Not a pretty picture.
You can try to spin this, but the words of the Paris Forum leader are his own indictment.
Sure, as long as we agree they are an indictment for one particular Forum Leader's unnecessary rudeness, and not in any way an indictment of Landmark Education in general. Given that the "spinning" was done by the soft news team, with emphasis on the words "soft news", and not by me, and that the video was specifically edited (complete with added music) to be more sensationalistic, this is not valid documentation against anything but that Landmark attendees in Paris sure get it rough. Hard news teams take a more objective stance and don't add video and sound effects.
And if you're going to refer to that video as evidence of anything AND paint yourself as an objective judge, you need to include the fact that the woman getting verbally roughed up in the video felt that she came out on the positive end afterward.
Quote
And no matter how you attempt to spin Landmark's humiliating legal defeat, when Landmark dismissed its own lawsuit with prejudice, it lost.
I just look at that lawsuit as business, although you may look at it differently. I hope that you would have the integrity not to regard your victory in that lawsuit as license to speak falsehoods or embark on a vendetta.
Quote
Regarding your attempt to personally attack me as somehow being responsive to a French documentary critical of Landmark, this is an old Scientology strategy.
I don't follow your use of the word "responsive", but I haven't attacked you personally. Perhaps you're confusing me with another poster.
You can go ahead and debate Landmark Education Forum's efficacy or express the opinion that you think it's dangerous, but I hope you're no longer making the allegation that there's any brainwashing taking place or that Landmark is somehow a cult.
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
turambar
()
Date: October 30, 2006 02:30PM
Quote
elenaQuote
turambar
The name "Hubbard" gives me massive dyspepsia, but if that was his good idea, then I'll have to sigh and admit he had one. But I doubt it was his idea. And whether he thought it up himself or read it somewhere, automatically rejecting any idea on the off chance that it might have come out of scientology. If Hubbard had invented the spoon and ice cream sandwich, would you only eat gelato with chopsticks?
Oh come on....
Of course L. Ron Hubbard didn't "think this up."
Good.
Quote
elena"
*snip*
The propensity to mourn, to pine, or to regret with the possession of a conscience is part of higher brain functioning. Most of us suffer in some way. Most great art is tapped from this massive well of despair. It's one of the major characteristics that distinguishes us from animals, though there are animals who have appeared to carry grief or longing for a lifetime and we have all heard of animals dying from what we assume to be a broken heart.
I don't believe, and I don't think you believe, that the large number of great works that are generated by deeply depressed individuals are a good reason to go out and do things that will turn one into a barely functional basket case. If one feels so inclined, one may legitimately seek solace from what one might perceive as even mild dysfunction or dissatisfaction in introspection, whether at the beach or at something that bills itself as effective.
Quote
elena
It appears, for all our labor, our pondering, and our willingness to suffer, there has always been a large segment of the population who will opt for the quickie-cure, the instant-fix, or the couple-of-weekends-plus-a follow-up "mind cure." What would you think of a "program" that offered an "instant" cure for the painful feelings of remorse a criminal with some conscience might feel? Most of us refrain from bad behavior because we don't want to suffer the consequences or feel the sting of regret, neither of which most sociopaths take into account as they go about their business taking advantage of others. They are not burdened by these feelings.
Let us all hope that the majority of sociopaths seek and are able to find decent professionals who can help them with their problems.
Quote
elena
Programs like Landmark, which were started by sociopaths like Werner Erhard, turn out "graduates" who resemble the "founder" in the respect that they are more sociopathic, more narcissitic, and more conceited. Do you really think this would be a better world with more assholes walking around?
I think your characterizations of L. Ron Hubbard and Werner Erhard are, by and large, absolutely accurate, but your implication that Scientology members and Landmark graduates are sociopathic, narcissistic, conceited assholes is presented without evidence or reasoning.* My impression of EST is that it had its good points more by happy accident then by design, and that its downfall was in the emphasis of personal integrity and authenticity (not Landmarkian jargon). EST, then the Forum, then the Landmark Forum have created a body of graduates who strive for these qualities in their personal lives and correspondingly have, over the years, demanded it in the organization that preaches that everyone should have them. I'm not at all sure that Werner Erhard thought in his wildest dreams that Landmark Education would actually become a high-quality institution, but it is fair to say that the follow-on courses are mostly excellent and the original Forum has improved to the point where most (not all) of it is. For Werner, I believe it beat selling used cars.
The general consensus of the Landmark graduates I know is that the world would be better with fewer assholes. There were only a few assholes in my Landmark Forum, and they stood out like, well, only true assholes can. Two in particular stood up in the three-month course, loudly proclaimed that they were assholes, proceeded to demonstrate it with vivid conviction to the point that their listeners had to wince, worked hard on themselves during that three months to the point where I think they were much improved. One actually got to the point where if I were in a room with him I could wait a full ten minutes before throttling him as a public service, and the other spent the three months apologizing to his newly ex-wife and trying to become a better father.
The majority of the attendees were fairly ordinary people who had picked fairly ordinary problems to conquer, and during the time I knew them, they seem to have done so.
Your criticism of "quick fixes" is, to me, a very valid one. Landmark Education realizes that the majority of its graduates make major "breakthroughs" during the Forum and then quite often revert to whatever they were trying to break through after the Forum is over. That doesn't go, of course, for people who haven't spoken to family members for the past twenty or thirty years and renewed ties with their families as a result of the Forum; that's kind of a permanent change. But for people who are trying to conquer a habit or behavior or improve their lives in some specific way, a weekend course is often going to seem like a dream a few months later, and that's the problem the follow-on three-month course (Forum In Action) is supposed to address. The cost was included in the cost of my Forum, and by and large it was very effective.
You are thinking of the majority of Landmark attendees as people with deep-seated psychological problems that need serious work. Landmark in my estimation is more oriented toward ordinary people whose lives are pretty functional. Your 400 bucks basically gets you a fairly tight program that's something like taking "The Seven Daily Habits of Highly-Effective People" as an extended class. If you've felt the urge to kill lots of people, and that urge bothers you, professional help is more appropriate.**
* A personal friend of mine who was one of the kindest people it has been my privilege to know died of breast cancer primarily because she had been raised as a Scientologist, even though she no longer practiced the religion. It just didn't occur to her to get breast exams.
** During college I noticed that clinical psych majors were, without exception in my experience, people with deep-seated and often frightening neuroses, and to a person, stated their motivation to enter the field as "to learn about myself".
Has anyone taken any Advanced/SELP/ILP with Landmark...
Posted by:
turambar
()
Date: October 30, 2006 02:57PM
Quote
skepticQuote
turambar
And to answer a question you haven't asked yet, but I think it seems natural to wonder, I haven't done much volunteering with Landmark, and I don't expect to do so in the near future. I have a startup business to nurse along, and other things to do, so my time is limited.
LE hasn't created a breakthrough in you regarding your concept of time?
I don't know about LE but the lgat I was with informed us that time and money were not real. Translation: not good enough "excuses" to not sign up for their course. They played with and dismissed those "considerations", as they called them. In true lgat form, they redefined money and time, to suit their purposes.
skeptic
Yes, I've said that the Landmark courses are well-worth the money. And it's true that for some people, saying that they don't have enough time or enough money is just an excuse not to do something for which they'll be grateful later that they broke down and did.
Having said all of that, I've twice had overly enthusiastic people ask me when I'm going to do the Advanced Forum (which I genuinely believe really is an awesome course) and then tell me that my excuse of time or money was not valid in their estimation. One response is to paste a smile on your face and just give them a long, drawn-out stare until they stop talking. On the phone, a long silence is pretty effective. Or you have my permission to use my excuse: "I'll probably do it at some point, but I'm remodeling right now and I don't have a toilet or shower. Until I get one, all other activity is completely off-limits."
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