Quote
elena
No wonder so many are willing to take the leap into an institutionalized form of la-di-da ~possibilities~ and la-di-da ~empty&meaningless~ insanity and that the Landmark schtick plugs right into that obsessive/compulsive rearranging-the-deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic hole.
I understood this better when I saw that Landmark wanted to suppress the author of the following quote. The addictive technique that someone "gets" is a way to escape reality (until it comes crashing in):
"With Landmark's help, you can look at a bad situation
and through a fairly simple exercise draw conclusions
about it that make you feel good. You use the power of
creative interpretation to infer positive outcomes.
Essentially you just make up your own reality by
selectively ignoring the facts in front of you. Got a
bad performance review at work? Well forget about that
and remember the time last year when your boss said
"Good work." Problem solved!
At Landmark you have hundreds of peers telling you
it's perfectly ok to think this way"
From this case Landmark filed.
[
www.culteducation.com]
The email message cited is below.
--------------------------------------
Subj: A Breakthrough for everyone
Date: 8/27/01 12:02:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From:
landmarkblows@yahoo.com (landmark blows)
To:
blah@blah.comOr, rather, a chance for all of you to ditch your
"landmark forum racket" for a real life...
The Forum
Landmark employs a well-tested and highly refined
formula to get your money. Their methodology is
neither proprietary nor unique, and is described in
any scholarly work about cult dynamics.
The invitation
Recruitment is via invitation from a trusted friend,
so you start out with a very open mind. This is much
more effective than seeing an ad in the newspaper. In
fact, Landmark does not buy advertising -- instead they
rely on the powerful word-of-mouth advertising from
their members. Usually advertising eats into a
company's profits, but not in Landmark's case.
The speakers
Landmark's forum speakers are charismatic, that is,
they are very good at being persuasive. They appear
believable, trustworthy, caring, intelligent, and
worthy of admiration. They are well-paid, highly
trained professionals, selected for their speaking
abilities. These are the only paid employees you'll
see at a Landmark Forum.
The "volunteers"
The member-volunteers you meet, including the friend
who brought you, are sincere in their belief that
Landmark is good for you. They have been convinced
themselves, and are being strongly encouraged to
convince others. In fact, Landmark assigns them
recruitment homework, as spreading the word is an
integral part of their growth as a member. They are
encouraged to take Landmark as far as possible by
attending course after course, each costing hundreds
of dollars. At these meetings, members are trained how
to recruit.
The psychology
Landmark preys on people with low self esteem or who
are somewhat depressed or dissatisfied -- in other
words, the majority of the population. People are
looking for answers and Landmark claims to have all of
them. They begin with what I call the "christmas
present."
The Christmas Present
Imagine seeing a box under the Christmas tree. It's
very nicely wrapped, undoubtedly placed there by
someone who cares about you. It's a very large box and
has a note saying "Something very special, just for
you." You can only guess what's inside, but you know
it's got to be something very special indeed. You
can't wait to unwrap it because you know it will make
you happy.
This is how Landmark gets you interested -- by telling
you it has something you want without actually giving
you a single detail about what it is. Consider the
name, "Landmark Forum." What does it mean? Absolutely
nothing. This was also true of their previous name,
"Est," and of a related offshoot which you may have
heard of: "Dianetics."
Landmark Forum is an empty box to be filled with
treasures that only your imagination can provide. This
is a popular advertising technique. Think of that car
commercial where you get only tantalizing glimpses of
the "stunningly redesigned" product. You get no
specific details, only a vague framework upon which to
place you wildest dreams of what you want the product
to be. It makes you want it even before you really
know what it is. That's how Landmark hooks you. Their
members are told they must not reveal any information
to outsiders about what actually goes on in the
meetings because that will somehow ruin their benefit.
In truth it would just undermine Landmark's
recruitment strategy and eat into their profits.
Breaking you down
Once you're hooked into attending your first Forum,
the psychological work begins in earnest. This is were
Landmark borrows heavily from successful cult
operations -- operations that have been powerful enough
to lead people to take their own lives in the name of
the cult, like Heaven's Gate. Of course Landmark has
no interest in mass suicide -- they want hordes of live,
happy, paying customers. Remember, Landmark's sole
purpose is to collect money.
Your weekend Forum is three consecutive full days plus
an extra evening. The schedule is 9 am to midnight
each day. No food is provided. Breaks are three hours
apart, and you are told that if you take an
unscheduled break -- even for the restroom -- you will
ruin the experience and not get the benefit for which
you have paid. The idea is to create physical and
mental discomfort by exposing you to marathon
sessions. Such a schedule inhibits critical thinking
and impairs mental alertness (true adult education
professionals recommend breaks at least every 50
minutes to keep participants alert).
When you finally get home you are exhausted, it's
after midnight, and you you have a homework assignment
(usually some sort of writing). And you have to be
finished and back in session early the next morning.
There is little time for sleep. Sleep deprivation is a
common technique that cult leaders use to make
people's minds malleable and highly open to
suggestion. Prisoners of war are routinely subjected
to sleep deprivation in the hopes they will reveal
secrets to their captors.
Another borrowed technique is public humiliation.
You'll be coaxed into getting up in front of the
entire group of 150 people to spill your guts,
revealing your deepest and most embarrassing secrets.
This often reduces people to tearful sobbing, which is
amplified by the microphone. Again, if you don't do it
you're sabotaging your benefit. This activity is
designed to break whatever self esteem you have left
and leave you desperate for something to depend on.
That something is Landmark. Exhausted, feeling
worthless and helpless (but also hopeful for rescue),
a charismatic speaker tells you there is an answer,
that Landmark can give you the power to make yourself
strong again, to make you feel good again. You've
already been told that the life you've been living is
unworthy, hopeless, and born of ignorance. You've even
been convinced that your family, friends, and lovers
are also ignorant and suffering from not knowing the
benefit of Landmark. You'll believe almost anything at
this point.
They don't have to convince you to go out and kill
yourself -- there's not need to go that far. All they
have to do is convince you there's a reasonable
likelihood that Landmark, through its special
"technology" that no one else has, can fix you. And on
the final evening you'll have your poor ignorant
friends and relatives along so that Landmark can offer
to fix them too. And of course you'll need to spend
another $700 or so for your next "advanced" course.
Denying reality
The only way Landmark can keep you paying is to keep
you in the dark about the reality of what Landmark
really is. So in a very clever twist, Landmark's
mysterious technology, the one you use to make
yourself happy, is centered around denying
reality -- pretending things are something they are not.
Now here's the twist: the fantasy that Landmark helps
you construct includes Landmark membership itself as
its basis. Once you have become dependent on the
fantasy, you will go into debt, if necessary,
attending courses and giving up your time as an unpaid
"volunteer." All this because without Landmark, the
unthinkable could happen: your fantasy would collapse,
and you would feel the way you did during those first
marathon sessions.
Building the fantasy
With Landmark's help, you can look at a bad situation
and through a fairly simple exercise draw conclusions
about it that make you feel good. You use the power of
creative interpretation to infer positive outcomes.
Essentially you just make up your own reality by
selectively ignoring the facts in front of you. Got a
bad performance review at work? Well forget about that
and remember the time last year when your boss said
"Good work." Problem solved!
At Landmark you have hundreds of peers telling you
it's perfectly ok to think this way, that it's ok to
automatically assume, for example, that it's your
partner's problems, not yours, that's causing strife
in you relationship. Why face problems if you can
simply decide they don't exist?