The most radical thing you can do is outside research on RR.com and other websites, so you can identify the box at a very safe distance and stay out of it. But if an LGAT graduate insists that you can only benefit by not being told beforehand how the process will work--thats what makes it hard to stay out of these boxes.
((A personal hunch/reflection: And it means that if you're ever thinking of doing a training seminar, you want to know whether the leader is a man or woman who can function competantly and gracefully in all areas of life--not someone who can only function in a scripted, manipulative social setting. Look for people who have been successful in ordinary human environments and who have not been working exclusively in and for LGATs.
Someone who can only function inside an LGAT setting may have difficulty teaching you skills that are transferable to a non-LGAT environment. ))
Most LGAT graduates would probably not be validated for behaving like LGAT trainers in the outside world. Their attempts to engage in LGAT leader behavior in a LGAT settings is likely to be experienced by others as rampant aggression, being disrespectful, bad manners, etc.
The aggressive graduate/wannabe trainer would perhaps encounter painful social costs/consequences because he or she lacks the means to dominate social interactions as an LGAT trainer does.
You can get by as a Prima Donna onstage, but not in real life.
As humans we hate to imagine that we are in a neurological state of readiness that can be manipulated to give predictable feelings of power and ecstacy--but it appears that that we are.
And these feelings are so marvellous that we hate being told, 'Feeling powerful isnt the same as [i:ba030480f3]being [/i:ba030480f3]powerful in your day to day life. You still have a boss and co-workers.'
[i:ba030480f3]Feeling [/i:ba030480f3]powerful is not the same as [i:ba030480f3]being [/i:ba030480f3]powerful.
Drew Kopp puts it in more elaborate terms. I have condensed portions of his argument. You can read the entire thing from page 37 to 39 if you go here
[
www.u.arizona.edu]
(Kopp's quote)
Conclusion : a Faustian Bargain
In revealing these formerly invisible bodies, the volunteers, as the source of the arrangement of space in the Landmark Forum, the Course Leader confirms that the material conditions and the means to manipulate those conditions are the primary constituents to the production of social space in each participant’s life.
The enthymemic message is clear: LE possesses the means, it provides the techniques and the technology to manipulate and master the material conditions, and thus the social spaces of life.
Participants become aware of the gap that exists between their conceptual intentions and the actual results they produce in life; [i:ba030480f3]controlling the material space is equivalent to owning the means of the production of social space.[/i:ba030480f3] (
'The LF, in its material space, demonstrates this to most participants, especially those who have experienced for themselves the sometimes exhilarating production of social space, breakthrough results, thanks to the LF....
This begs a further question concerning the values (e.g., “being extraordinary,” etc.) the material arrangement of space attunes participants to by the end of the course. The core to each of these values is power and [i:ba030480f3]owning the means of production is a clear material expression of ownership of power. [/i:ba030480f3]Landmark banks on the fact that all people lack power in some area of their lives and thus, desire to possess power. The majority of Landmark’s customers, I claim, are the disinherited—those somehow separated from ownership of the means of the production of social space; their conceptual intentions do not match the social spaces they desire to inhabit.
([i:ba030480f3]In other words, subjects do not own the means of power needed to create and script social spaces and social interactions. This means that unlike the Forum Leader, the graduates will return to an outside world where they do not own the means of power, and will thus suffer painful consequences when they emulate the Forum Leader in settings that will not validate such behavior--and will very likely punish it[/i:ba030480f3]--Corboy)
…..But to own Landmark’s technology, [i:ba030480f3]one must practice the manipulation of the spaces required for the “technology” to effect transformation.[/i:ba030480f3]
A Faustian bargain results: continue to participate, and you will continue to be the master of your fate…
[i:ba030480f3]The (LEC)technology is indispensable; it becomes more important than the freedom and power in life it promises to grant its possessor[/i:ba030480f3].
I would contend that this is [b:ba030480f3]a fundamental inauthenticity of Landmark Education[/b:ba030480f3], to use its own term to describe this dynamic and Landmark’s lack of transparency of its operation.
***Landmark Education, in the form of any and all of its representatives, pretends to their customers, that participants can acquire this technology, its consequent powers, and then drop the tools that granted these powers at any given time in the future. For instance, the Course Leader, at the very end of the LF, will say, “I take it all back,” claiming that everything said in the course possesses absolutely nothing to believe in.
Yet, this is said against a background of materially enforced re-conceptualizations that have inscribed participants into [i:ba030480f3]a social space the existence of which is completely tied up with continuing to participate with Landmark Education[/i:ba030480f3].
Thus, Landmark’s technology compels participants to inscribe themselves further into more extensive and elaborate social spaces the organization offers participants to inhabit.
This is the Faustian relationship with Mephistopheles, wherein desires are granted, [i:ba030480f3]but only if the means used are promoted endlessly, [u:ba030480f3]ultimately gaining importance over the participant’s original aims[/u:ba030480f3][/i:ba030480f3].
(Moderator note:)Kopp concludes, probably ironically, as he is no longer involved with Landmark:
Long live the institution.
(End of quote)