Alex, here is the kind of thing you could do in a trustworthy organization:
Go to a forum leader and ask, "Have Landmark members ever submitted a petition to change recruitment policy? If so, can I see a copy of the petition and any formal responses?"
If you are working with people of high integrity, this should be a trivial process.
If you don't think you can do this, then why not?

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joe6
Alex, here is the kind of thing you could do in a trustworthy organization:
Go to a forum leader and ask, "Have Landmark members ever submitted a petition to change recruitment policy? If so, can I see a copy of the petition and any formal responses?"
If you are working with people of high integrity, this should be a trivial process.
If you don't think you can do this, then why not?

Point is what? Landmark is out of integrity. Told that to the Reformers.

Point is this : to be a change agent you must be a relentless agent of change. If you buy the [i:f7371e104f] story [/i:f7371e104f] that Landmark can't handle core change then you've invested in an unchangable Landmark. If you're in the listening that Landmark is capable of core change, then core change shows up.

My [i:f7371e104f] assessment [/i:f7371e104f] is that the Landmark Corporation has arrived at an inflection point where the corporate DNA reconfigures or it doesn't... how it remains configured or how it reconfigures will be a direct reflection of the [i:f7371e104f] identity level commitments [/i:f7371e104f] of the organization...

As long as this thing known as The Teaching remains sacrosanct , the deepest, most empowering, genuinely transformative possibilites of the organization will remain out of reach because the organization's best energies will be diverted [i:f7371e104f] away from [/i:f7371e104f] the living dynamism of the energized mind and toward [i:f7371e104f] enshrining [/i:f7371e104f] a Holy Relic known as The Teaching...

No babies need be thrown out with the bathwater ... organizational change can be instituted in a coherent way that allows for [i:f7371e104f] elegant transitions [/i:f7371e104f] toward high quality functioning whille trimming out what has grown stale, obsolete, and perhaps the enforcing of distinctions that weren't useful in the first place....

Some admirable human qualities will be needed : curiosity, flexibility, humility, spontenaity, humor , stamina, a jeweler's eye for philosophic nuance and a leader's capacity to see the big picture... it's a tall order, it can only be filled by truly extrordinary people, it's where you distinguish talking the talk from walking the walk, it's where the rubber meets the road, where you guys will see once and for all what you're [i:f7371e104f] really [/i:f7371e104f] made of.

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Alex_Rush
Point is what? Landmark is out of integrity. Told that to the Reformers.

My point is: If you had in your hand a copy of petitions from one or two of the previous attempts of Reformers, it would be extremely useful for focussing your efforts. It is the same management that has previously thrown off efforts just like yours. You can learn from their mistakes.
And by showing the other Reformers a copy of a previous failed petition it might bring a needed sense of reality to the situation.

I think we also get to see what Landmark is made of.

Railroad companies nearly went extinct because they didn't realize until it was almost too late that they were in the transportation business, not the railroad business. At their zenith, railroads were the best of transportation, but better means came along. They could not re-invent themselves into road or air carriers, but stubbornly kept playing with their trains. It cost many companies their life.

This is what it means to worry about the wine and not the wineskins. One must change out the wineskins as often as necessary to keep the wine fresh.

Now, while my personal disclaimer is that "human potential" and "transformation" is a load of crap, if I put on my dispassionate observer hat, given this reform effort, I would have to ask Landmark, "what business are you in?" They might say they are in the transformation business, and if that is true, then they will change out the wineskin of guest nights and develop new where-the-puck-is-going transformation "technologies" and internal reforms to keep doing what they do, and the money will follow. If they do not change, then it is legitimate to question their answer to my question, and wonder if the business they are really in is making copies of Werner to spread throughout the world and bring in new customers through coercion, or the business of ________________ (you fill in the blank). Same logic if they say they are in the education business, or whatever.

This will be interesting to watch.

-lightwolf

Has anyone noticed the behavior of senior management in the typical corporation, or typical government agency, or typical big budget, big stakes operation of any stripe ?

They always "are in the listening of change" ... oh you can be sure of that, you'll find no better "speakers of the listening" anywhere in town... ah, when the conversation comes to shifts of [i:5e771ed900] power [/i:5e771ed900] the "listening for possibility" suddenly, inevitably... well... how do we put this ?

Matters such as these, you have to understand... we here at headquarters, have, ummm... a body of knowledge you see... we have a special listening unique to ourselves, we have our own, ummm, way of dancing with the possibility, although we do, we ever so, ever so very sincerely do hear what you are speaking, but, on careful considertion, we did our special dance, the really special dance we keep for occasions such as these with out most sensitive listening, we even have these pills we take, Werner left them for us in a bottle that says "only open in emergency!" ... and, goodness gracious you know we took those green pills just like Werner told us... and we danced in the possibility, we were manifesting to the right, and manifesting to the left, by gum we were talking in tongues, channeling L. Ron, channeling Crowley, channeling Fernando ... and ya know, we had a great vision, and [b:5e771ed900] The Great Spirit of Breakthru [/b:5e771ed900] come down from a hole in the sky, and he sayeth unto us uns, [b:5e771ed900] "Yo Honkies, Don't Fuck With The Recipe !!!" [/b:5e771ed900] ... and by goshy gumkins, what was us uns to do ?

So we thot it best to leave things as they are for the time being... Divine Revelation and all that, y' unnnerstand, sonny boy ?

Nutrino, thank you so much for the information you've posted here.

I remember twigging to the fact that Landmark was Wittgenstein-and-Heidegger Lite, and I used to think to myself, if they were really interested in human potential and human freedom, they would equipping people with the tools to read Heidegger. But of course to do that means equipping people with the tools to refute Heidegger.

One humungous problem they have on the [i:8c08949940] figure-ground [/i:8c08949940] level is that they speak of [i:8c08949940] their [/i:8c08949940] distinctions as having a special divinatory or revelatory power... now, ye wise thinkers all... in order to have these specialized distinctions, you need a [i:8c08949940] distinction engine [/i:8c08949940] somewhere in the generative organism... Fernando loved to get riled about this phenomenon he called [b:8c08949940] Meta-Stupidity [/b:8c08949940] ... how marvellously fitting to the situation, one might wryly observe... although I cannot recall any ESTmarkian running things through the cognitive filtration of Meta-Stupidity... In a more serious vein, since Fernando was enamored of all things [i:8c08949940] meta [/i:8c08949940] .... it seems to be a striking omission, a case of the dog that did not bark, a lacuna, that ESTmark nor F.F. got around to the demanding business of [b:8c08949940] Meta-Distinctions [/b:8c08949940] ... the "ground" which supports the "figure" of [b:8c08949940] Distinctions [/b:8c08949940] ... now that's more than a little weird , vanishing actwise, coming (or [i:8c08949940] not [/i:8c08949940] coming ) from an outfit that [b:8c08949940] makes a point of being in the business of making distinctions [/b:8c08949940] ... it's kind of like sitting as a judge and having no theory of law, or being a banker and having no theory of finance, of being a chef and having no theory of cooking.... Am I missing something here ?[b:8c08949940] DO they have a theory of distinctions ? [/b:8c08949940] How do they distinguish between distinctions ? How do they arrive at them ? How do the they define them ? What are the properties of a distinction ? How do they make qualitiative distinctions about distinctions ? How are they employed ? What is their impact ? How do they differ from other, similar concepts ? [b:8c08949940] In short, what are their BELIEFS , in toto, about the nature of distinctions ? [/b:8c08949940]

Lacking that, or failing that ... what is their basis for the claim of being experts in the domain of distinctions ? Inquiring minds would love to know.

I have been following this thread with great interest.

I must wonder what Werner Erhard would think of reforming his organization to cut out the heavy heavy emphasis on recruitment through "registration"/"enrollment".

Even though he's technically far away in the Cayman Islands, (or perhaps at a film screening in Atlanta, GA) his brother and sister Harry and Joan Rosenberg still run the organization.

One must wonder what the prime motivations of these three individuals really are...
Could it be
A) Money and Power
or
B) "The Transformation of the Planet"

Both don't jive.

It all about [b:24cab97241] branding [/b:24cab97241] ... the Erhardians have marketed a semi-successful branded psychological ordeal, they have a decent formula, it brings in steady if not great money... and all the players wrap themselves up in inflated concepts wrapped up in inflated language... basically your typical rigid, authoritarian pyrimidal corporate model with the folks at the apex firmly maintaining their grip on power, prestige, and a nattering base of servant trolls who love burbling the mantras du jour ... not too different from the dynamics that kept J. Edgar Hoover in power at the FBI until he was well past his prime and left a permanantly dysfunctional institution in his wake... I'm sure J. Edgar, an arch hypocrite if there ever was one, felt that in his own way, the ends justified the means... [b:24cab97241] power corrupts, baby... and absolute power corrupts absolutely. [/b:24cab97241] Every time, regardless of context. They should put that distinction in their pipe and smoke it for a while.