Quote
amemg

I asked why did he decide to do the Advanced Course "For some CLARITY" was his response. He told me that his possibility was "Courage and Completion" and that is why he had to stay in SELP now (I guess he would not be in INTEGRITY if he didn't follow through with his COMMITMENT).

I feel totally deflated. I thought I saw a glimpse of Hope. Clearly she hovered at my door and moved on!!!

"Clarity," or ~Clear,~ or ~getting clear,~ or ~going clear~ is what they sell at scientology. They call their new recruits "Pre-Clears." They just love this concept.

"Completion," or ~Completing,~ or the ability to "complete" (the past, for instance) is also a scientology "product." It's also a figment of L. Ron's imagination and resembles something akin to the brain-wiping "process" portrayed in "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and delivers you, supposedly, to a higher plane where everything is "clear" to you because you are no longer burdened with unpleasant thoughts and troubling feelings and memories.

Both L. Ron Hubbard and Werner Erhard admonished their followers that all sorts of baaaad things happened or would happen to them when they didn't "complete" (their assignments or work-duties or other obligations and contractual agreements, one presumes).

Being or remaining fully "committed" is the only way to happiness, according to both gurus. They like loyalty in their slave-laborers and it's always easy to dismiss potential complaints about the "technology" not working by attributing the followers' failings to a lack of "commitment," which they all must entertain from time to time, with such demanding requirements. Hey, you aren't getting what you want? Pray harder or work harder is the standard cult advice.


They capture decent people with these silly prescriptions -- people who feel duty-bound to following through on their promises. Theses are the worker-bees at the bottom of the pyramid holding the whole thing up. They scammers at the top feel no such obligation to "their word." At cults like Landmark they know this and they use it against the people they recruit as "volunteers."

It's a nasty business all around.



Ellen

LOL...


It's all around funny to me that, after all this time and after all the attempts to dress the stuff up with Wittgenstein or Heidegger or, god knows, Plato, Aristotle, Sartre, who else?, (notice they NEVER mention Napoleon Hill or Alexander Everett), it's still and underneath all, just old ElRon at the core of all Landmark stuff.


Here's an excellent old post from usenet:

[tinyurl.com]

"Dave"
Dec 12 1999, 1:00 am
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.skeptic, de.alt.paranormal
From: skep...@efn.org (Dave)
Date: 1999/12/12
Subject: Large Group Awareness Training (Landmark, est, etc.)


I'm interested in what you all think about the following, but I'd
especially like to hear Dr. Price's opinions:

I recently attended the Landmark Forum as part of a leadership initiative
at my company. As most of you probably know, "The Forum" is a "kinder and
gentler" form of the "slash and burn" encounter group, est, which was
established by Werner Erhard in 70's.

Problems I had with the program (in no particular order):

1) Landmark is a "for profit" institution ($47 Million in revenues in
1997)
with 450 employees and over 6000 "volunteers." These "Stepford-like"
clones in the back of the room were extremely creepy.
2) The high-pressure marketing techniques which integrate continued
enrollment into other Landmark seminars and pressure to invite friends and
family to be pressured by Landmark to sign up, are, in my opinion,
extremely suspect. The whole thing reminded me of bad experiences in
automobile showrooms (which is not surprising considering that Erhard was
a car salesman in his youth).
3) The cult-like steps taken to manipulate the emotional state of the
participants:
a) Begin by getting people comfortable in a group sharing experience.
b) Get them to accept the leader as an authority figure with "special
insight." (Cult of personality...)
c) Get them comfortable with a "new language."
d) Wear them down mentally and physically through 16 hour sessions.
e) Close the deal by creating the expectation (through heavy suggestion)
that a "breakthrough" has been achieved. "Breakthroughs" are what
Landmark sells. This is supposed to be an order of magnitude change in the life of
the recipient which would not be ordinarily achieved.
f) The poor souls who either sign up for the next course on the grad night
or who don't sign up there but succumb to the after forum sessions and
then sign up, are prime candidates to be turned into Landmark zealots. These
folks shamelessly go on the prowl hounding everyone they can to be a
"guest" at a forum graduation, intro, or the community event held several
times with each course. (1st rule of the car salesman, "get 'em into the
showroom...")
g) Once the new forum grads go through the next course they have accepted
Landmark as a way of life. They are led to rationalize that it makes
sense to "enroll" in courses all over the country lasting up to a year with
several out of town sessions and a huge time and energy commitment to
"homework" with no regard to the cost. Sadly, at this point, pressure and
repeated phone calls are no longer needed to get them to "enroll".
h) They internalize the Landmark program and then they live it. Their
circle of friends becomes more and more fellow Landmark devotees with whom
confidence is placed and intimacies are shared. They are effectively
paying for their friends which is another abhorrent aspect of the program. This
is Landmark's ultimate goal - they now have a recurring income stream from a
customer for life.
4) The fact that some of the people I spoke with during the weekend seemed
to have serious psychological problems. (Landmark claims to screen out
"unhealthy" people from the program. That's bullshit. Their "screening"
process is a questionnaire which basically asks if you are in the care of
a mental health professional. My experience is that many times it's the
sane folks among us are who are in therapy.)
5) The logical fallacies and semantic word games which are pawned off as
"deep revelations."
6) The implication that the Landmark "technology" is original and unique.
7) The constant implication that only through Landmark, can one "live life
powerfully" and "live the life one loves."
8) The fact that the weekend was led by an Aussie and she tried to talk
baseball. (Really... friends shouldn't let friends who play cricket talk
baseball. I was embarrassed for all you mates...)

But... the weekend and Tuesday evening did not all suck. For example:

1) The Landmark Forum is made up of a clever mix of Christianity (the
power
of forgiveness), Zen (becoming aware of one's mental patterns), a mixture
of other philosophical perspectives (Heidegger, Keirkegaard, Wittgenstein,
Sartre, Spinoza and Plato). This hodgepodge was cleverly presented to
build to a climax where we were all supposed to "get it." So now, I'm
going to save you all $325 (my company paid for me to go) and tell you what
you're supposed to "get" from the Landmark Forum: "Life is empty and
meaningless." Basically, this means that our experience of life is
determined by internal decisions made in our past about how we will "be"
with a given circumstance. We humans are "meaning making machines." I
"got" this principle years ago from the book "Man's Search For Meaning" by
Victor Frankel. I agree with this perspective and find it to be central
to the reflective skeptic and critical thinker's world view. (For an
excellent fresh explanation of this viewpoint get Dennett's book, "Consciousness
Explained.") This viewpoint presents the possibility that we can "rewire"
how we "feel" about something.
2) No one could witness or listen to the reports of the familial
reconciliations which took place during the weekend and during the Tuesday
night graduation and not be moved. For example, a man stood at the
microphone and publicly asked his mother to forgive him for all the
problems he'd caused her and then confessed to his young son (about 10
years old) that he was wrong to have been so hard on him. Or the father
and son who were reconciled after a three year silence due to a business
disagreement. This is good stuff, in my opinion. Peace between people is
good.

What do you folks think about the good, the bad and the ugly of Large
Group
Awareness Training?

What have you experienced that can produce the same or better results in
people without the bullshit?

How important is "community" to you? How important is "belonging to a
tribe?"

Do you find that the skeptic's stand creates a sense of loneliness? What
do you do about that?

So what do you folks think? And in case I haven't told you lately, I
love all you guys (and I got my own beer)!

Dave

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


And here's a good response "Steve" posted:



Steve xxxx
Dec 12 1999, 1:00 am
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.skeptic, de.alt.paranormal
From: skep...@efn.org
Date: 1999/12/12
Subject: Re: Large Group Awareness Training (Landmark, est, etc.)




Sounds very similar to est which I went through about 15 years
ago. Est included a lot of the stuff I was familiar with from other
self-improvement programs. But est differed in that it was largely
incompetent. After "graduating" from this waste of time, I realized that
everything they said fell into one of three categories:
That which was meaningless;
That which was meaningful but wrong; and
That which was correct but trivial.

The guy who persuaded me to go was one of those who flits from
enthusiam to enthusiasm. He became so annoying in urging me to take
further est stuff that I made him promise never to mention it again.
There is a good description of Werner and est in the book (if I
remember correctly) by Jerry Mander called "Four arguments for the
elimination of television".

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

Hi amemg,

He may have rationalised from 5 cult reasons down to one in the space of a minute - and he had to work to get it down to only one - but you did have him thinking there for once. And that my friend is a stepping stone as far as victory is concerned.

As per the follow-up postings, you keep at it. Even if it is only non-Landmark stuff that you are engaging his critical thinking skills over. I think you are doing well.

Keep at it. We're cheering for you!

John

PS. You have him for much longer than a single phone call from the Landmark-bot (who is simply doing its homework assignment). It is a wonderfully unfair advantage that you hereby have my permission to quietly enjoy. :-P