...Always makes me think of ElRon's scientology "sailors" who, with no experience, could supposedly learn to man and navigate a ship using scientology "technology." After wandering around lost in the ocean for a few months and ending up in ports inhospitible to the kooky kult, ElRon had to hire a real capitan. The guy didn't know anything about or want anything to do with scientology and ended up furnishing a lot of information on his adventures with the old gas-bag and his strange followers.


Ellen

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. It is evident that to many people the idea that they are in complete possession of their own minds, their own opinions, and their own decisions that to suggest otherwise throws them into a panic they can barely tolerate. It is like questioning someone's sanity to offer that they might have been swayed, tricked, or manipulated by nefarious tactics hidden from them. They are so certain they are able to weigh evidence and evaluate facts that they can be taken for one very long ride using this against them.

It's the old "free will versus coercion" argument that mostly falls in the cults' favor. It is one big "sacred cow," that's for sure.
Ellen

This particular 'sacred cow' is more like a 'scared cow.'

The common experience is to see ourselves as hard-bodied agents, impervious to outside influence, freely choosing how to feel and what to think.

The truth is we are social creatures, and embodied creatures. The glory and danger for us as human beings is that we are so readily influenced by the company we keep, and by social context, and such matters as whether we are running short on sleep.

If we can let ourselves recognize how readily we are influenced, then this actually gives us the capacity to choose which social situations to stay in and which ones are bad for us and best avoided--the reason why RR.com exists, as a consumer advocacy and education resource for those who want to be well informed, before venturing into highly influential situations.

Some have asked how on earth well intentioned people can justify behaving in ways that are exploitative or just plain cruel.

One possible insight is provided by Robert J Lifton, who studied the process of thought reform and whose checklist remains a valuable resource for those researching dysfunctional groups.

Dr Lifton has also described a lesser known phenomenon that he termed 'doubling.' He learned of this when interviewing Nazi physicians who violated medical ethics by conducting cruel and lethal medical experiments upon concentration camp prisoners, or by superivising the murder of persons (those who were retarded or disabled) and thus deemed inferior and useless to the the Nazi state.

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Dr Lifton managed to win the trust of these physicians (ironically by seeing humanity in them that they'd refused to see in those whom they harmed)

The physicians were not mentally ill by conventional guidelines. They saw themselves as kind, altruisitc persons, and they were thoroughly decent when with thier own families, or among those they considered fully human.

But what these physicians had done was to dissociatively split their awareness, thier personalities into two different selves--a process Dr Lifton called [b:fa76a7cb52]'doubling.'[/b:fa76a7cb52]

**It must be emphasized that 'doubling' is not an insane or abnormal thing to do. Persons in high stress occupations, such as emergency rescue personnel, do a form of doubling in order to cope with the stress of the situation. They shove their normal human emotions of grief and horror off to one side, switch on their professional role, then go in and deal with situations that would cause most of us to freak out.

(Eg: such as what happens when medical personnel have to wash dead, burned flesh off of burn victims or change their dressings. This is absolutely necessary for the healing process, but dreadfully painful to the suffering patient.)

Lifton spoke of the 'Auschwitz self' that enabled the physicians to do these terrible things, that violated the medical ethics in which they'd originally been trained, versus their core identity.

First, before getting involved in the medical crimes, the physicians had already bought into the Nazi ideology, which wrote off certain groups of us as non human, even as vermin--homosexuals, Gypsies, Jews.

So one had to buy into an ideology that validated the dehumanization of certain groups of people. For this reason alone, we must beware of any belief system that does this.

[i:fa76a7cb52]((Note It is interesting that some groups have such beliefs but take care to conceal them from new recruits. Publicly, the group may present itself as having a benevolent, compassionate agenda, but conceal an actual belief system for all but core members, a belief system that may be elitist, that may relegate certain groups or non-group members to subhuman status, and in some cases, a fascist or apocalyptic social agenda. Only those persons who have been in the group for awhile and have, without realizing it, passed various loyalty tests, will be given access to these hidden teachings.))[/i:fa76a7cb52]

Lifton wrote of the effects of prior commitment to Nazi ideology before the physician went further and perpetrated crimes against humanity:

"To be sure, a Nazi doctor arrived at Auschwitz with his psychic numbing well under way. Much feeling had been blunted by his early involvement with Nazi medicine, including its elmination of Jews and use of terror, as well as by his participation in forced sterilization his knowledge of or relationship to direct medical killing "euthanasia" and the information he knew at some level of consciousness about concentration camps and medical experiments held there, if not about death camps such as Auschwitz.

Numbing was fostered not only by this knowledge and culpability but by the admired principle of "[i:fa76a7cb52]the new spirit of German coldness[/i:fa76a7cb52]" Moreover, early Nazi achievements furthered that hardness; and it is often the case that success breeds numbing."

Ernest B., one of the persons interviewed, told Dr Lifton: 'one could react like a normal human being in Auschwitz only for the first few hours.'Lifton,
The Nazi Doctors, pp 442-443

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Note how the Nazis found a way to frame emotional coldness as something [i:fa76a7cb52]desirable[/i:fa76a7cb52]. There are strands in today's human potential movements in which harsh methods are seen as necessary to break recalcitrant egos and that anyone who has misgivings or cares about normal ethical guidelines is accused of not having what it takes to run with the big dogs. (Enron)

Lifton does not mention it, but we should remember that before arriving at Auschwitz, a physician would already have been thrown off balance by having lived in a society that had become debased by Nazism.

This physician would have already witnessed many of his Jewish colleagues and non-Nazi associates being hounded out of the medical profession. The achievements of illustrious German Jewish physicians and scientists (Einstein, Ehrlich, Wasserman, Fritz Haber) would have been devalued and expunged from the history books. This Nazi physician would have had to stifle feelings of grief for absent friends and colleagues, the departure and perhaps murder of once beloved teachers--early stage psychic numbing.

We should also remember that the physician who takes the Hippocratic Oath vows to honor those who have taught him or her the practice of medicine--and the Oath includes a vow to support these teachers in old age if necessary.

Thus, to silently stand aside and allow one's teachers to be hounded out of the profession and their names removed from the new Nazi medical texts would have been a violation of the Hippocratic Oath.

It is no accident that cults cut us off from our families of origin. That is what happens when history, including the history of medicine and science, is distorted to serve an ideology.

Likewise this happens in cults when you witness others being yelled at, or see friends of yours being kicked out and shunned. If you stay in a group that behaves this way, you have to make yourself numb-C)[/i]

Lifton continued:

The Auschwitz self depended upon radically diminished feeling, upon one's not experiencing psychologically what one was doing. I have called that state "psychic numbing.", a general catagory of diminished capacity or inclination to feel...

'The Auschwitz self also called upon the related mechanism of "derealization", of devesting oneself from the actuality of what one is part of, not experiencing it as "real." (That absence of actuality in regard to the killing (of persons) was not inconsistent with an awareness of the killing [i:fa76a7cb52]policy[/i:fa76a7cb52]--that is, of the Final Solution.

"Still another pattern was that of 'disavowal', or the rejection of what one actually perceives and of its meaning. Disavowal and derealization overlap and are both aspects of the overall numbing process. page 442

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You'd act from the Auschwitz self or from cult self when perpetrating the harmful deeds, then shift back to your 'family person self' when going home. Or you'd consider the team to be responsible, not yourself.

According to Lifton, the former physicians reported that drinking and group socializing were part of the process by which the Auschwitz self was formed and maintained. Alcohol assisted in psychic numbing.

([i:fa76a7cb52]it is interesting that in various sections of upper corporate life, it is customary to drink and socialize together, preferably at elite locations like
expensive golf courses and ranches.

It is noteworthy that Nutrino tells us that it is an unwritten rule in some of these corporations that a person who has been out of the corporate scene for 2 years or more is automatically classified as unfit for recruitment into the upper echelon career track--this person is someone who cannot be trusted to stay within approved patterns of social bonding...and who perhaps, during those years on sabbatical, has been exposed to subversive humanizing experiences???C)[/i:fa76a7cb52]

Lifton tells us that a key part of the rationale that supported the Auschwitz self and its murderous behavior was to blame the victim.

Friends, does this sound familiar?

(italic material in parenthesis is my own interpolotion to Lifton's text-C)

The meaning structure of the Auschwitz self depended greatly upon "blaming the victim". Mengele's insistance that the Gypsies were genetically responsible for their fatal noma tumors ([i:fa76a7cb52]created by Nazi medical experimentation![/i:fa76a7cb52]), Ernest B's disgust with the Gypsies for not distributing their food equitably ([i:fa76a7cb52]they were starving because they were kept short on food by the Nazis who ran the camp[/i:fa76a7cb52]), the repeated blame placed on prisoner-doctors for the terrible condition of their patients and the frequest deaths among them--all were of a piece" ([i:fa76a7cb52]the terrible condition of the patients and the death rates were caused by the KZ camp conditions orchestrated by the Nazi command, over which the inmate-doctors, themselves prisoners, had no control whatsover!) [/i:fa76a7cb52]Lifon, page 460

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This blame the victim mentality is drearily familiar to us here at RR.com.

The guru or LGAT that orchestrates the situation in which subjects incur harm, and about which subjects are usually not given full information before participation--yet the guru or LGAT contrive to shift agency and blame onto the subjects.

Lifton described how anger and rage vented at those one harmed played an important function in keeping the Auschwitz self maintained and in control--and it may explain why abusive gurus, LGAT leaders and corrupt politicians or coporate heads also vent anger in abusive ways:

When a Nazi doctor became enraged at a tiny mistake made by a prisoner doctor on a medical chart--a pattern all the more remarkable when one considers the extent of falsification throughout Auschwitz documents--that anger had an important psychological function. It was the Aushwitz self's effort to hold onto the "as if" situation of a decent medical establishment and [u:fa76a7cb52]to deflect potential guilt by attacking the other rather than confront itself[/u:fa76a7cb52]." Lifton, page 461

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corboy
Dear Nutrino, there is a book, slim and excellent, on narcissistic families.

You may find a lot of overlap between that model and what you have observed first hand, in LGATs and LGAT-y/narcissistic corporations

The book is 'The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment' by Pressman and Pressman.

Corboy, thank you so much for recommending this book. I finally got hold of it and heaved a sigh of relief when I read it. It describes so much that is relevant to me and helps me understand what it was about the LGAT I got tangles up in (Landmark) that made it so attractive. Thank you!

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Jack Oskar Larm
I recently spoke with an ex-employer who was excited by the prospect of having his employees attend the Landmark Forum. He had just come back from an Intro Night and was going to do more. A lot more!

His reasoning was simple. He wanted better productivity. In his words, he was tired of in-house bickering, sick leave and just plain laziness. He envisioned a work team that really worked!

Of course he was promised by LEC that all of this would change if he and his employess addressed some fundamental issues (yeah, we've heard that before). Anyway, my ex-employee thought a small investment like this would make his business shine.

By this stage, he'd had a few drinks and was all smiles and verbosity. There was that 'sinister' glint in his eyes when he concluded that 'If only I could get everyone onto a level playing field'.

Of course I told him about my experiences and asked him to be careful. As usual, he wasn't interested in the 'negative' press, and definitely wasn't going to visit this site or any other 'hate' site. All I could do was humour him and feel sorry for the poor bastards still working for him.

And there's the catch! Landmark and other LGATs are tailor-made for employers with a singular bottomline. People are not really human beings. Sure they can act human in their own hours, but from this employers point of view he wanted uniformity at all cost. When I suggested that he was considering de-humanising his employees he replied, 'Sure, why not. As long as profits are up everyone's happy. Right?'

Yeah, right!

Werner started repurposing started in the 1980's repurposing est. But it still hasn't caught on and hasn't come close to the success of the seminars. While it may appear to be tailor-made for businesses that look at the bottom line of profit. The techniques in Landmark have limited applicability to most businesses.

Most businesses depend on some level of ingenuity and inventiveness from their employees to compete with other businesses in the same field that are creative. The techniques in Landmark create uniformity in thinking and action which in the long run make the business less competitive and left behind by other inventive businesses. Particularly going into the future as knowledge, technology and other such business areas expand that require free, critical and creative thinking.

Corboy said:

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"corboy"

"Physically she was present, but emotionally she was absent. (The term for this is dissociation, and very likely LGATs teach people to do this whenver they encounter stuff that doesnt fit into the LGAT scheme--its a case of 'beam me up, Scotty')

This woman said trying to relate to her mother was 'like trying to grab smoke.'

People who grow up in famlies like this may be 'pre-formatted' to adapt quite readily to life in dysfunctional, essentially narcissistic corporations--and to LGATs" quote]

Hi corboy;

this is so RIGHT ON! My friend, has lived with her dad since she was 19. My experience of him is as a very controlling, emotionall cold/distant individual. For the 5 months prior to him enrolling her in landmark/EST, they were barely talking to each other. In December/06 he had re-married a woman that she disliked; (she lives in another part of town and they only see each other on weekends!) The relationship between her and her dad had been reduced to them leaving each other cryptic notes, mostly him telling her not to eat the left-over food that he had brought from his new wife's house! In desperation I guess she would do anyhing to get her dad's affection back....so....*sigh* ....

Nothing has changed much between her dad and her, -- he won't take the Landmark courses, says he does not need them, he is getting them through his new wife.

....All I can do is wait to see how this unfolds...

'shad'

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caligari
Werner started repurposing started in the 1980's repurposing est. But it still hasn't caught on and hasn't come close to the success of the seminars. While it may appear to be tailor-made for businesses that look at the bottom line of profit. The techniques in Landmark have limited applicability to most businesses.

Most businesses depend on some level of ingenuity and inventiveness from their employees to compete with other businesses in the same field that are creative. The techniques in Landmark create uniformity in thinking and action which in the long run make the business less competitive and left behind by other inventive businesses. Particularly going into the future as knowledge, technology and other such business areas expand that require free, critical and creative thinking.

I agree that Landmark brainwashing can be a liability for 'creative' employees. It is, however, a compelling brain-bleach for businesses employing 'production line' workers.

I have a creative acquaintance who has recently been hooked by the LEC line and, IMO, his work is suffering. Obviously I'm no expert and he may just begoing through a rough patch, but I can't help thinking that his creative processes have become somewhat skewed and limited. Time will tell.

From my experience, LEC is certainly more suited to creating worker drones and, IMO, employers are seduced by this promise of conformity. No doubt it is a ticking bomb for many, but business is about risk and many employers regard Landmark training as an acceptable risk.

However, it still amazes me how many employers encourage and coerce their employees to attend these forums. And 'graduates' just love to justify their allegiance by bragging about all the good that LEC offers to organisations (the police force, etc).

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Jack Oskar Larm

However, it still amazes me how many employers encourage and coerce their employees to attend these forums. And 'graduates' just love to justify their allegiance by bragging about all the good that LEC offers to organisations (the police force, etc).

More than anything else, cults are about manufacturing robots. They need lots and lots of free or cheap labor and deployable agents at the bottom to support the comfort of the power players at the top. It's a corporate (fascist) structure as much as a cult structure and business leaders can recognize a good thing when they see it. They can always cull for the aggressive, competitive opportunists and steer them into sales and the domineering, egotistical "top dogs" and steer them into management. But these people have already proven themselves as obedient to authority and willing to follow orders. Neither cults nor corporations have much interest in rogue players, the critical, skeptical, curious, doubtful, cynical, or those with an allegiance to greater truth or morality -- those with creative or artistic or imaginative natures, in other words. Cults, and the LGATs that mimic them, have provided perfect models for certain corporations and other organisations to utilize. They just follow the directions right out of the recipe book.


Ellen

And these corporate cults dangle a huge, metaphysical, gold-laden carrot for those 'creative' types that are in their professions for similar reasons that LEC exists - to make megabucks and gain more power.

The majority of 'creative' people I speak with on a daily basis wouldn't give LEC the time of day. And that is comforting, reassuring. Creative, intelligent people are not immune to notions of 'more money' and 'more power', but they generally approach such yearnings with real integrity (not the definition given by LEC, BTW). I mean, thinking people think before they relinquish all they have already gained by remembering what they have experienced and by using sound reason (and, if I dare say, employing their well-honed intuition).

I suppose the point is that cults like Landmark will always rope in those with least resistance. Resistance in this context is simply one's ability to stand one's ground, do the research and question every step of the way - very much like the creative mind searching for creative solutions to difficult problems.

I am witness to more reason than folly almost everyday of my life. Cults often seem to have some 'magical' ability to draw in a wide range of people, but I am convinced that there are many more who clearly see the folly of closing one's eyes and stepping blindly into the void...

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Landmark e-mail
Bloomberg BusinessWeek:
Last week's issue spotlights Panda Express, the largest chain of Asian food restaurants in the United States, and Panda Express's commitment to personal development, including Landmark Education. 

In the article, Panda founder and co-CEO Andrew Cherng talks about why he is passionate about the value of Landmark Education and The Landmark Forum: “I see the benefit of Landmark to the human race,” he says. “If you quit Panda tomorrow, I still want you to go to Landmark.”

Landmark website

Anyone still want to eat there?