I found the following article helpful in explaining how the Landmark "new age", "Me" philosophy of:
"There is no meaning to life other than what YOU Give it",
is so powerfully adopted by almost all participants through psychological techniques employed by the Landmark business model.
Creating Possibilities or pursuing profit:
[
home.swbell.net]
Reader s will need to scroll down to view the document.
There are two areas that stand out for me in the article:
1. That if the Landmark philosophy was taught without the psychological tools used in the Forum it would not be so unconditionally adopted by near to all participants - that is: On its own, the philosophy is just a mix of Scientology and bits of Eastern philosophy. It really does not look like anything special when lined up along side accredited university degrees in philosophy.
2. The area of Connitive Dissonance is explained well. Please read it in full but here are the main points:
"Attitude change can happen through cognitive dissonance in a number of ways. Dissonance is a motivational state (i.e. people experiencing the unpleasant state are motivated to reduce it), in which something has to change. Many possibilities for the change exist including:
* changing attitude to be consistent with behaviour
(e.g. even though you may have believed that you didn’t value expressing emotions to people you do not know well, now that you have done it (perhaps even unwillingly at first), you may have changed your attitude toward it, convincing yourself that it is really not that bad). This results in a self-generated attitude change;
* changing cognition about the behaviour (The behaviour itself cannot be changed, since it already has been completed). (e.g. now that you have already behaved in some way, you might tell yourself, that is really just the way things are (through using a theory that may support that view), and so the behaviour is quite consistent with your basic attitudes and understanding). This can change the way you see "the world" and your attitude toward it (to be consistent with your behaviour).
* attempting to reduce the dissonance through acquiring new information (e.g. while drug-abusers often know their actions are harmful, they often eagerly seek new evidence to show their drugs are not all that bad); or
* attempting to reduce the dissonance by minimising the importance of the inconsistency (e.g. you may convince yourself that the inconsistency "doesn’t really matter" or is "not relevant" in the greater scheme of things. This might mean that you simply go along with the crowd, or generally accept the differences as not affecting you in that particular instance)."
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The last two points may explain why Landmark advocates constantly post on this site and in the manner and fashion they do.
Oz