I thought I saw it all, but i missed the last final chapter: the Disconnection.
Disconnection is a thought reform tool. As Lifton has it, it is the "classification of those not sharing the ideology as inferior and not worthy of respect", and their total eviction from cult member's life.

I knew it was coming, even if I tried to avoid it. The last landmarkian i was still in touch with was the good friend of mine who actually recruited me. He was the only lekkie i knew before the forum and the only one that was a real friend and not just someone you meet in a seminar and never hear from again. When I was ready, I talked to him about everything I found about Landmark and he sounded surprise but after a little time he started to defend landmark. Yesterday I was remembering all our conversations about landmark and I realized he actually lied to my face, he knew everything about the cult allegations, the mind control, the france 3 video scandal, and most important, he knew what i knew and why i left before i spoke with him. Yesterday night i had him confess he had been briefed by the secretary who handled my refund when i went to the centre asking my money back. He knew everything and when i was talking with him about how i felt, about all the pain i heard of from many others, when i told him about the suicides, the murders, he was just having a laugh at me putting up a mask of 'oh, i never knew this, oh, i didn't know what was going on, oh, i'm so gonna check everything out'. That c*nt.

I decided I had enough. Enough of being fooled by him, enough of trying to reason with him, i'm not a professional cult-exit counsellor, it's not by job and as an ex victim it's too much to ask from myself. So this morning I asked him to leave me alone. He replied 'fine.take care'. The guy who was always 'i love you so much you are my best friend i'll always be here for you', that guy trashed me away without a second thought once the landmark spell was broken. The guy who always said 'i care for those i love more than anything i would never stay in landmark if i suspected for i second it could be harmful' chose to laugh at the evidence (and he said a suspect would've been enough) and had no problem to cut me out of his life. Not a 'why?', a 'let's talk about it'. Once i was out he was more than happy to cut the friendship.

Don't think I'm complaining about him. I asked him to get out of my life. I'm just taken aback by how easily he accepted it. I believed he was different. I believed he would have shown a bit of sadness. I believed he really loved his friends more than landmark. I never could have guessed how easy and quick it is for them to cut the non-landmark from their life. No regrets, no remorse, no shame, nothing, like you are a leper, and the next day they go about bragging to be the personification of Love and Everything That Is Good.
My point is, this is not the first time i tell someone to f*** off. If they care for you they try to make peace, if they don't they say f*** off back. But Landmarkians, they do neither, they just don't care about anything or anyone. They have this buddha peace about everything, even about, especially about their abuses, deception, emotional and psychological violence.
And what really hurts me is that i trusted this friend, and by that trust i took the forum, and it turns out for him i'm just a leper, a number in his statistics, an unsupporting obstacle in the way of his successful SELP leading (he's finally became a London SELP leader. Congratulations ESThole, you made it, you f****** peace of s***).

I don't think there are words to describe how disgusted i feel. And he was just a good friend (well he wasn't. but i thought he was), thankfully not family or loved ones. I can't imagine what that must feel like, to lose a wife, a husband, a family member to cult with that 'it doesn't mean everything' attitude throw in your face.

If anyone from landmark is reading this, don't reply. really. I can't stand you. I don't wanna hear from any of you. I'm disconnected now, stay in your cult ad rot there

To the normal people: I didn't know how horrible it could be to lose a friend because of landmark. I've read about it but i never experienced it before. As i said he was just a friend and i wouldn't dare to compare this loss with those of a wife or a husband but it's s*** anyway. At least, with him goes my last connection to the landmark. It's over now. It's really over. it's a bit of a relief I guess.

Hi Maurice,

That "disconnect" policy comes from scientology, which they all copied, I reckon. Apart from that, one of the defining characteristics of a cult is whether or not they practice "shunning." This is ancient and probably goes back to some primitive family or tribal times when ostracism could easily mean death. The cults know this. They know what an effective technique it is, both to alienate the outsider and to strengthen the bonds within the cult. After all, if you've cut all ties to your friends and family outside the group, you're bound to become dependent on those within. It's a nasty trick all around and one of the reasons the anti-cult movement got going back in the 1970s.


I have to say, knowing what I now know, I wouldn't get involved with anyone who defended Landmark or any other of these groups for a minute. I think there is some important line in the sand -- on one side are those who recognize the truth when they see the evidence and run like hell away from the stuff, and on the other are those who dig in, retrench, and start building a defense. Even though there are hundreds of stories of people who eventually got out after spending many years supporting and recruiting and defending some group, it's a long, long wait. And as you've observed, many of those most devoted turn into robots -- mean, arrogant, inhuman, machines incapable of feeling or responding in normal human ways.


Ellen

Quote
Rswinters

I have a feeling it is the same in each and ever LGAT company.

Yep. Amazing how similar they all are. Cookie-cutter, as a matter of fact. They must all be afraid to stray too far from the original formula. It must be an incredibly lucrative business to have spawned so many imitations.

Quote

Klemmer says it purpose is to build ethical leaders with no one left behind.

LOL...

Sounds like the Bushie "No Child Left Behind" thingie. (I wonder if he was sub-liminibably <his word> plugging into the "Left Behind" kook-factor.)

Scientologists used to brag that theirs was the "most ethical organization on earth." And Landmark advertised their "product" as creating "a world that works for everyone." Blech!!!!


Ellen

Hate to tell you this.... [b:eb5994b037]all of these growthie groups lard their discourse with heaping scoops of "ethics"[/b:eb5994b037][/color:eb5994b037].... oh, but should you bore down into how their "ethics" differ from normal human decency, you'll find yourself knee deep in a new swamp of definitions... their "ethics", you see, aren't your garden variety "ethics".... they're a special ethics that makes them, well, better and different than other, errr, less ethical people... Werner appeared to have incorporated a notion that ordinary decency hid a secret compartment filled with Inauthenticity, and only by a brutal unmasking of the false self would True Goodness be found, you know, the sort of True Goodness that Gets that weakness is nothing more than a Racket.... unlike you, you know, you may get things, but you get things with a lower case "g", and they, heavens, they Get things with an upper case "G"... and you can't have real, upper case Ethics, as distinct from your weenie candy assed lower case ethics.. until you are, ummm. Enlightened, and therefore, Ethical !

Oh, BTW, everything in ESTmarkHardLand IS a "conversation"... you don't just do stuff, you have "[b:eb5994b037]a conversation with possibility[/b:eb5994b037][/color:eb5994b037]"... which soon becomes the linguistic equivalent of Thorazine... except that Thorazine wears off after 48 hours...

So I'm having a "conversation" with one of these appalling New Age Phonies[/size:eb5994b037] the other day... this particular crapola was a rather funky home brewed swill of NLP, Landmark, and The Secret derived manifestation beliefs... and I was somewhat amazed at how well they had mastered the art of dealing with criticism (or I assume, anything that would cause them to think a mildy unusual thought) with this, as described, Buddha like indifference... there was something so airlessly self satisfied, so complacently beyond stirring the brain cells, no matter what you said, it was like "hey, I'm at peace with that"....

It had this weird energy sapping nature, like trying to make a sand castle with quicksand... fairly soon it dawned on me, she knew darned well she'd run out of spiel in a couple of minutes, and they've got a masterful defense move when they're out of moves, "you're right, you're a genius, it's all good, your truth is your truth" ... and somehow, don't ask me how this ass backwards run of illogic works, by being Imperturbable, they can "hear" you while being "at cause"... [b:eb5994b037]except they don't "hear" you, in fact they do the opposite, while they're smiling and nodding, in their minds they're hitting the delete key[/b:eb5994b037][/color:eb5994b037]....

Scientology, all est-like derivatives, now NLP, and whatever else is clanking around in the bilge, all seem to be moving in the direction of Powerful Negation.... they can, in the words of one author, "negatively hallucinate" away anything that they can't control.... and that's both wacked out and deeply unhealthy, because it is creating a population with a dysfunctional thought process, one which developmental psychologists associate with little children who can imaginatively deny away large portions of external reality and replace this with a fantasy kingdom where everything if OK (I'm OK. you're OK, Osama is OK[/size:eb5994b037]).... or, if everything isn't OK, then one gets to be the all powerful superhero or some other overcompensations...

Now... what DO they call this process of reordering the external world to fit their goo-ga linguistic, philosophical, and spiritual models ? Why, ETHICS ! It's the right thing to do, you see, because it is ETHICAL, and the reason all those heathens live in their pathetic illusions (because they don't have the guts to face their inauthenticity) is because they lack the right Ethics...

It may be of more than passing interest that the Nazi SS also had it's own writings and indoctrinations about this, ummm new thing they were on to,
Aryan Ethics... ([i:eb5994b037]hart sein[/i:eb5994b037]... to be hard/brutal)... and they justified their unspeakable behavior by referring to a "higher ethics" which they were answering to... so even the Waffen-SS contemplated itself in ethical terms, just THEIR ethical terms...

Quote
nutrino

It may be of more than passing interest that the Nazi SS also had it's own writings and indoctrinations about this, ummm new thing they were on to,
Aryan Ethics... ([i:ab8ff207e9]hart sein[/i:ab8ff207e9]... to be hard/brutal)... and they justified their unspeakable behavior by referring to a "higher ethics" which they were answering to... so even the Waffen-SS contemplated itself in ethical terms, just THEIR ethical terms...

I remember one time i pointed out to my friend what seemed to me a quite scary similarity between landmark and the Nazi. I said to him "the leaders always bore us with this integrity thing, they always stress a lot on that, they keep on talking about honoring your word, keeping your commitment...what if I don't agree with landmark? You sound like the nazi at the Nuremberg Trial, "We were just obeying the orders". It's the same ethics. You really DO talk like them. How can you justify that? do you really have no limit?"
He got really upset and started to mumble "you shouldn't judge them [he meant the nazi] you don't know what it is to be pressured they could have been killed they had to obey any situation is different you have to understand people who are pressured"
"yes i do but still, first some people had the courage to die before obeying those orders. I don't expect that courage from everyone but at least a conscience, some regrets, a beg for pardon"
"you don't understand you think everything is that easy but it's not blah blah".
I stopped because he got all weird and then i never mentioned that again. I just started to withdraw my obedience to landmark as secretly as i could. I couldn't trust a way of living that implied empathy to nazism.
It's not that bad to remember the past (in this case history) after all.

Yes, yassssss, yikes...

And imagine this stuff fading into a subtle, ragged edge where it's just ever-so-slightly detectable and yet repugnant enough to send you screaming from the room. I could list a number of examples from real life but the one that sticks in my memory is the one in Pressman's book about the "trainer" who died unexpectedly. Upon hearing the news, Werner Erhard dismissed it and continued his schedule as planned, explaining: "I was nice enough to him while he was alive." No deference to his family, no public contrition, no polite gesture, and no respect for the feelings of others who may have genuinely cared for the guy even if Erhard didn't. No, his ~higher ethics~ permitted him to publicly dismiss the death as inconsequential, which, being closer to his personal appraisal of the event scored him better points in his own self-important estimation. You can see the logic, and yet it stinks. I believe he lost a couple of his most ardent followers after this bone-headed gesture which his ego must have blinded him from seeing as a very bad PR move. I imagine he must have started believing his own schtick at this point.


Ellen

Ever since little Jack R. had his near fatal head injury as a child it seems that his thought processes might be a hair off base... frequently, because they lack ordinary sense of restraint, some of the brain injured project a bizarre "illusion of profound clarity".... I've actually seen this myself in clinical settings where, in one case, a major business figure, a fellow who gave birth to an industry was institutionalized... he had suffered major brain trauma and was considered fortunate to be alive, or not a quadriplegic... yet there he was, walking around, giving out the perfect impression of a master of the universe businessman speaking with clarity, authenticity, and boundless confidence... I have to say it was genuinely inspiring to be in his presence and have a conversation with him.... and have some idea of the man he once was... however, this is the grim however, he was only capable of spinning nonsese into the most beautifully embroidered cloth, there were male nurses present, and everyone knew that his routine was brilliant and harmless. They also knew it was total hooey and never based their thinking on his thinking... it would have been laughable...

OTOH... it was a sobering life lesson for me. I saw how compelling a complete looney case could be, using all the right words, speaking in all the right tones, with perfect social skills, knowing how to make you feel special, intensely focusing his emotive beam... he retained something magical.. so much so I was told that even his business associates had a hard time forcing themselves to believe that he could not possibly fill the role that he once had... I was dumbfounded... some of the most educated, competitive, rational men and women on planet Earth, and as long as craziness was packaged right, they didn't understand the full extent of the irrationality under the surface....

Yes...

Miss one minor connection, remove one little-used key, drop one almost invisible fiber and the whole thing is thrown off. A clock will eventually tell night when it is day and a ship will end up in Haiti rather than Florida. A (yellow) cake-walk war becomes an intergenerational disaster and a man loses his self-possession and ends up under a bridge. Makes you just cringe, and that small lie, duplicitous, inconsequential, intentional or not, alters the rest of what comes after. Reminds me of the thought: "The most dangerous lie is that which most closely resembles the truth."

These cult types think the truth is just something you can make up (or ~create~ or ~choose~) and minds are just so many commercial opportunities.


Ellen

Quote

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ever since little Jack R. had his near fatal head injury as a child it seems that his thought processes might be a hair off base... frequently, because they lack ordinary sense of restraint, some of the brain injured project a bizarre "illusion of profound clarity"....

Understatement of the century! If I were to make a backyard layman's guess, I'd be bold enough to presume the entire limbic system was cracked into a hundred little lesions. The 'scarring' must've produced the sociopathic organization we see in action today.

Just an ugly structure without a soul or any goodness in character what-so-ever.