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elena

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pwl
I am amazed at the fervent hatred you people show to Werner Erhard. What did he ever do to you to deserve such venom?

Wow. In the words of another inveterate Landmark debunker: "Have you taken responsibility for how 'us people' show up for you?"



Ellen

LOL! yes, take responsibility for criticism. you created in your own clearing. duh.

What would the 2 daughters say if they weren't hypnotized?

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worriedpleasehelp
What would the 2 daughters say if they weren't hypnotized?

I have had personal dealings with Celeste and her family for over a quarter of a century,as in they are in-laws.
I have witnessed a byproduct of the Erhard clan.
I watched Celeste stick a needle in her arm,sell off family heirlooms,lie,cheat steal and embezzle (Kiko office supply) all to support her habit.
These facts are very easy to prove, all one needs is a record search in L.A. county courts and the courts in stark county Ohio. You will have to search for marriage license's to find the proper last name for the search.
Celeste is being hidden by her father to date to escape the numerous felony charges she faces in Ohio.
I am not posting to be hateful, although it was really hard to forgive.

one can search Google for:

"Celeste Erhard"

Of course, the target for critical analysis is Werner Erhard, and his associates who have made, and continue to make millions and millions of dollars from est to Landmark, and all the offshoots.

I’d like to write something about Jack Rosenberg/Werner Erhard and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger – and the implications of the latter’s involvement with Nazism. I think it’s of general relevance to the theme of this thread. Hope someone finds it useful.
It is well known that Heidegger’s philosophy is a hugely important influence on Landmark Forum. The Forum ‘teaches’ that -
• Life is empty and meaningless (that is, it has no given meaning).
• However, an authentic confrontation with this nothingness can liberate us to ‘Be’ authentically rather than driving us to despair.
• The other side of the confrontation, we can be free of the limiting ideas that we had mistakenly thought were the ‘given’ meanings of life and we can take responsibility for creating our own possibilities through making commitments to Being authentically.
- a clumsy summary, but you’ll know what I’m driving at; and it is all derived from Heidegger’s secular existentialism as outlined in his ‘Being and Time’. Also much of the Landmark jargon is derived from Heidegger’s project to create a more precise way of talking about our experience of ‘being in the world’.
At the beginning of the 1980s Werner Erhard consulted with Heidegger scholars Hubert Dreyfus and Fernando Flores about applying Heidegger’s ideas in the Forum context. At this time the reputation of Heidegger in the USA and continental Europe was prestigious. It was known that Heidegger had a ‘flirtation’ with Nazism during the 1930s before he became ‘disillusioned’, but it was generally thought that the flirtation was brief and excusable.
The more disturbing truth about Heidegger’s relationship to Nazism emerged from intense scholarly research of his archives after his death in 1976. The findings of this research began to ‘break’ in the mid 1980s. As a result of them today even died in the wool defenders of Heidegger admit to the following facts:
• Heidegger was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler; and for one year actually a Nazi revolutionary activist.
• When he was rector of the University of Reisberg (1933-34) he presided over a programme of Nazi politicization of his students, and over the drafting of regulations discriminating against Jewish and Socialist students
• He also secretly denounced academic colleagues to the Nazi authorities for crmies of having ideas and activities that were not politically appropriate
• After World War II he found himself disgraced and discredited
• His rehabilitation during the 1950s took place mainly through the supportive testimony of Hannah Arendt. Hannah was a Jewish sociologist who escaped the holocaust by fleeing to the USA. She published a passionate and incisive analysis ‘On the Origins Of Totalitarianism’ in the early 50s which gave her fame and academic respect; and with this fame and respect went the prestige that meant that when she testified that Heidegger’s flirtation with Nazism was brief and of little consequence it carried weight. Obviously, given the context, it also helped Heidegger that she was Jewish.
• Hannah had been a student of Heidegger’s in the 1920s when she was 18 and he was a thirty five year old married lecturer. They had a passionate affair – in which she was obviously the unequal partner – which lasted several years. It seems that her infatuation with her charismatic teacher in her younger days carried over to her mature years. It is tragic that a woman who otherwise seems to have had great integrity was prepared to tell half truths and untruths on Heidegger’s behalf because of her unresolved attachment to him – tragic and very human.
• Until his death in 1976 Heidegger refused to condemn Nazism, apologise for his complicity in Nazism, or accept any responsibility for his actions as a Nazi (although he was implored by his academic colleagues to do so).

In Heidegger’s defence it has be said that there is little evidence to suggest he was actually a rabid anti-semite. It seems that the appeal of Nazism for him was a disgust at the rise of mass industrial society and a naive belief that Nazism offered a better alternative. Also Heidegger’s period as an active Nazi was only for one year. In 1934 the Nazis removed him from his post as Rector at Reisburg, mainly it seems because they feared the obscurity of his writings with his baffling use of language (the forerunner of ‘Forumspeak’) might bring mockery on Nazism through association.

Today, the question of whether Heidegger’s ideas are in some way infected by his time as a Nazi is a hot topic – it is a subject of passionate debate. People in the academic world who really know their stuff on Heidegger have taken up different positions.

Some will argue that you can’t condemn a man’s ideas because of his character – the ideas need to be assessed on their intrinsic merits; and Heidegger had many fruitful and suggestive ideas that can tell us important things about our ‘being in the world’. Indeed he made a vital contribution to modern thought.

Others will argue that because Heidegger’s philosophy ‘majors’ on integrity, responsibility, and authenticity his own failure to take any responsibility for his Nazi past’ and the shoddiness of his evasions, must lead us to question the validity of his thinking about integrity. We cannot simply ignore passages such as the following –

German Students! The National Socialist revolution brings complete upheaval to our German life....Do not let dogmas and “ideas” be the rules of your being. The Führer himself and alone is the German reality, present and future, and its law. Learn always to know more deeply: from now on every matter requires decision and every action responsibility. Heil Hitler!
(Heidegger in his proclamation in the Freiburger Studenten Zeitung : November 3, 1933)

In open debate about the status of Heidegger, academics have honourable differences. However, regarding Landmark’s use of Heidegger’s ideas a s part of its ‘guru script’ delivered with totalitarian methods, I have very grave misgivings. It makes me shudder –especially because I know that my friends who are Forum ‘graduates’ are basically well meaning people of liberal democratic ideals (ideals that cannot be derived from either Heidegger or the Forum).

Any thoughts?

The concise Wikipedia article on Heidegger and Nazism is excellent further reading – balanced and objective and corrects any bias I may have displayed above.

Werner Erhard started his est "training" in the early 1970s. His major influences were "Think And Grow Rich," by Napoleon Hill, "Psycho-cybernteics," by Maxwell Maltz, and L. Ron Hubbard's scientology. He wasn't educated or informed enough to have ever heard of Heiddeger. Later, when some of his followers suggested his clap-trap sounded vaguely Heiddegerian, he latched on to the suggestion, no doubt thinking it gave his nonsense a more prestigious appeal. It was pasted on to what he had already started. The stuff you quoted at the beginning of your post is really from L. Ron Hubbard, which has its own bizarre derivations. There is also a subtext of the nihilism or existentialism which was pervasive in the post-war period of Werner Erhard's earlier years, though he was never much interested in any rarified philosophical pondering but rather what he could use to bend his followers' minds into sales machines.


Ellen

William W Bartley III was a well respected academic philosopher. He became a close disciple of Werner Erhard and may have assisted Werner to assimilate Heideggerian material.

His expertise was in Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittegenstein, but he could have assisted Werner in utilizing H's material.

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Bartley wrote a biography of Werner Erhard, the founder of est. Bartley was graduate of Erhard Seminars Training, from 1972. Werner Erhard refers to Bartley in the book as "My friend Bill". William Bartley served on the advisory board of Est, an educational company.

Here is the Wikipedia summary

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Dear Ellen and ‘Corboy’

Thank you both so much for replying to my overlong post, and for your constructive advice.

Yes Ellen, you know your stuff and have a far greater knowledge of the original influences behind Erhard/est than I do (it’s interesting to know that Erhard first got his potted existentialism from Hubbard – I reckon Hubbard probably got his existentialism from a Reader’s Digest article on Jean Paul Sartre in between studies in Aleister Crowley and Science fiction!). The only thing I know about, that I’d add to your list is Zen Buddhism (or more precisely the teachings and techniques of Japanese Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism which Erhard assimilated from the writings of Alan Watts; I’m unsure whether he was an associate of Watts or whether he simply read Watt’s books and listened to his broadcasts)

All that I know about Erhard confirms your other point - that he is no profound thinker. He’s a sound bite man who plunders ideas from here and there, reprocessing bits in catchy little slogans without context to suit his ‘larger purposes’. I’ve recently listened to a recording of him speaking about Heidegger on YouTube and it’s not impressive – and he rants like a demagogue at points; most unedifying.

I'm sure that Erhard has wanted to associate himself with the pedigree of Heidegger purely to give the appearance of intellectual respectability - and also with the pedigree of Japanese Zen Buddhism to give him some ‘spiritual’ but not 'religious’ respectability with an eye to his traget audience. (I also find it interesting that both Heidegger and Japanese Zen have a difficult history regarding totalitarian ideology and so the moral authority of both is open to some big questions anyway)

Corboy – I didn’t know about Erhard’s connection with William W Bartley III and that he may well have helped Erhard 'assimilate Heideggerian material'. I understand from the New York Times article ‘Heidegger for Fun and Profit’ (stored on this site) and from other sources I have read that the Heidegger scholar Fernando Flores – who was close to Erhard at one time until he suddenly seems to have distanced himself - also had some input in shaping the Forum. In addition, Flores’s mentor, the renowned Heidegger scholar Hubert Dreyfus may also have had input as a consultant (it appears that Dreyfus coined the phrase ‘Being A Stand’ that has become a Forum slogan).

I understand that Flores was once close to Erhard but has since wisely distanced himself and that Drefuys was probably simply paid a consultancy fee by Landmark for his pains. The case of William Bartley is sadder and I reflect that very intelligent people can often be blinded by the same intelligence (witness Heidegger and Fascism, and Sartre – the preeminent Heideggerian of the Left– and Stalinism). Cognitive dissonace can afflict anybody.

Finaly I'd liek to say that in my first post about Heidegger I really didn’t mean to imply that Erhard has any intellectual respectability (just in case anyone gets this impression from reading it).
My view is that:

There is a lot of disturbing and damming evidence about Erhard and the Landmark Corporation that cannot be explained away by slick corporate apologists or muddled intellectuals.

While the Landmark ‘process’ may have enhance motivation for people who already have strong egos but are felling a bit at a loss, for a significant minority of course attendees its affects can be catastrophic and sometimes fatal.

There also seems to be evidence that the Landmark ‘process’ can blunt and disorder people’s normal capacity for empathy – which cannot be a good thing.

And my hunch is that the Landmark ‘process ‘can significantly blunt someone’s capacity for engaging in real critical thinking – sorting out good arguments from bad arguments, sorting out the truth from the bogus and plausible.

It is this last point that makes me want to engage in some sort of debate on this site about the philosophies that Landmark appropriates to give it plausibility and respectability. Obviously Landmark publicity wants to appeal to people who may be thoughtful but haven’t had the luck or time to do much serious thinking. Hence its entirely bogus claim that it is a sort of ‘Socratic Dialogue’.

I understand that some people scan this site who are thinking of doing the forum or who want to know how to advise friends and loved ones who are thinking of doing it. I think it would be good to have a further conversation here about Landmark and ideas – it might help somebody as a supplement to the other conversations that take place here.

Feel free to pick me up on any points I’ve made. I’m not an academic but I can think critically. I'm often wrong and am ready and willing to be corrected. And will try be briefer in future.

All good wishes

Dick

I've had a think about this one - read over my post and consider it to sound like coming form someone wiht a bonnet full of wild bees. I think there is scope for discussing whether or not the ideas behind the Forum are sound or not - but it probably is not so appropriate here. I've found another site where this discussion si going on and it will be a better place for me to hone and sort ideas that are still tentative/wooly.

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elena
Hard to believe the chutzpah, the arrogance, the sheer outright gall of these clowns thinking their idiot "theories" deserve to be written and printed in some legitimizing format. I'm amazed they weren't laughed off the stage.

"Oversimplifying somewhat, "honoring your word", as we define it, means you either keep your word, or as soon as you know that you will not, you say that you will not be keeping your word to those who were counting on your word and clean up any mess you caused by not keeping your word. By "keeping your word" we mean doing what you said you would do and by the time you said you would do it."

Ellen

Integrity can also mean the wholeness and completeness of a thing.

For example, a bicycle wheel is whole and complete when it has all its parts. However, if you remove the spokes the bicycle wheel becomes out of integrity...but more importantly, it no longer works as a wheel. Lacking integrity not only does the wheel not work...but the whole bike no longer works. Integrity, the wholeness and completeness of a person or thing.

Now you might not find much value in that metaphorical context, and that is all it is...a metaphorical context. However, the value I get from it is an understanding about how one's life maybe is not working. When I am not true to myself and my nature...when I am trying to be what I think others want me to be instead of what I have in me to be...things in my life stop working. I can see how if we multiply this to including many people who are perhaps trying to be what they believe others want them to be rather than being true to themselves a picture starts developing of a world that doesn't work. Again, it is just a metaphor...but somedays it sure does look like the world doesn't work very well.

So while doing what you say is one definition of integrity...being what is in your heart and soul (being whole and complete) is another definition of integrity. Similarly, not doing what you say you will could be construed as a lie...trying to be what you think others want you to be could also just as eaily be construed as a lie.