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Acid Reindeer
don't condemn something you wouldn't do, just because you do not understand the motivations behind it. you have overlaid so much of your acculturation. do you consider it morally wrong to cry during a movie along with a whole lot of strangers?

oh, and unlike with the key party, you do get a choice as to who you cuddle with, it says right on the website.

On crying during a film, it depends on how demonstrative the weaping is. I've gone to films where people act like it's their living room -- cracking jokes , calling others down the row on cell phones, going in and out of the theatre like they were going to the kitchen for a snack (over four times.) Now even people like those in the theatre will not start suddenly cuddling with strangers. That is just strange and infintile and can't be rationalized that others are just too puritanical.

-- Caligari

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Now even people like those in the theatre will not start suddenly cuddling with strangers.

no, they wouldn't, but they also wouldn't have paid to go to the movie theatre to cuddle with strangers any more than you would go to one of the cuddle parties to see a movie.

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elena

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Acid Reindeer
they charge $30 per person, not $600. the figure comes from around twenty people times $30 per person. at least according to an article I just found.

where did you find "copyrighted" LEC terminology? not trying to trap you, just honestly curious.

If you go the the "official" Landmark website there are some pdf brochures you can download with little copyright symbols next to certain words. As I recall, they were prohibited from using the phrase "strong suits" to descrribe what that call "winning formulas" because the Forumette who came up with that metaphor left and wanted to take her intellectual "property" with her.

hope haven't tried to copyright "rackets", as that one pre-dates est (it comes from Transactional Analysis).

anyway...

I do acknowledge that Landmark copyrights phrases. I only wanted to know which particular ones the founder of CuddleParty may have copied/stolen, not that it matters.

Yup! By golly, they have. Who do you suppose gave them the idea to copyright their BS. Wait, wait....don't tell me!


From what they have the nerve to call a "syllabus." (I think they should be sued for butchering, mangling, and willful disregard for the English language.)



II. Already Always Listening™



IV. The Vicious Circle™



V. Rackets™: The Payoff and the Cost




[www.landmarkeducation.com]

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Acid Reindeer

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Now even people like those in the theatre will not start suddenly cuddling with strangers.

no, they wouldn't, but they also wouldn't have paid to go to the movie theatre to cuddle with strangers any more than you would go to one of the cuddle parties to see a movie.

To not discriminate who one is with, their motives, intellect and individuality and physically touch for long periods of time is going to a psychologically regressive, infantile and irrational state. Potentially it leaves one open to irrationaly trusting people who would take advantage of them. To not evaluate the Cuddle Parties for what they are and do is morally irresponsible to the intellectual health and critical trust of individuals.

-- Caligari

Elena, Landmark likes to copyright certain phrases, this much I know. I wonder only (out of curiosity) which phrases Mr. CuddleParty had appropriated, though I do not care that much.

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elena
V. Rackets™: The Payoff and the Cost

daft Landmarkians! rackets comes from the work of the psychotherapist Eric Berne.

Caligari, you remind me of my mom*...

within the [i:2bfe9ad14c]space of a sentence[/i:2bfe9ad14c] she would go from possibility to probability to certainty, provided she wanted to believe in that certainty.

yes, alternate states of consciousness. no, inducing them does not invariably lead to Satanic machinations.

if I start seeing Scientologist types handing out CuddleParty flyers on the street, if I start hearing stories about bad experiences, then I will have concern.

I can see the reasoning here... unconventional behavior: suspicous. alternate states of conscious: suspicous. involvment of founder with LEC: suspicious.

three suspictions add up to certainty. call in the Marines!

* -- who took Landmark, via her work, by the way

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Acid Reindeer
Caligari, you remind me of my mom*...

within the [i:9ef2263b68]space of a sentence[/i:9ef2263b68] she would go from possibility to probability to certainty, provided she wanted to believe in that certainty.

yes, alternate states of consciousness. no, inducing them does not invariably lead to Satanic machinations.

if I start seeing Scientologist types handing out CuddleParty flyers on the street, if I start hearing stories about bad experiences, then I will have concern.

I can see the reasoning here... unconventional behavior: suspicous. alternate states of conscious: suspicous. involvment of founder with LEC: suspicious.

three suspictions add up to certainty. call in the Marines!

* -- who took Landmark, via her work, by the way

The issue is not that critiques of Cuddle Parties remind one of puritanical views or recall the values of parents. The issue is the psychological consequences of organized mass, indiscriminate, non-sexual intimacy.

Consider the intellectual and psychological consequences of being intimate with people one doesn't recognize as individuals with separate personalities, purposes and values and only as physical bodies. The assault the lack of distinguishing individuality has on maintaining and developing ones individual psyche with personal values and boundaries.

-- Caligari

There have already been articles written about how "creepy" the experience was. And it creeps many of us out just to read the website, it's so Landmark-like.

Caligari, though you keep harping on this damage or whatever that could happen, like I said, possibility does not equal certainty. if you looked into the folkways of any culture on Earth you will find losing identity as a central human experience. you will a lot more freaky business than Cuddle Party on this planet of ours. try ritualistic scarification ceremonies, group sex, Appalachian snakebiting cults, those crazy Japanese phallus festivals. shocking I know.

if you have any specific information on the specific dangers of this group, then by all means share it. not suspicions, mind you, actual information. the subjective impressions of journalists calling the experience creepy does not count. if people who went to these events started popping up on these forums and calling this a manipulative group then I would consider that more substantial.

I think I will stop discussing this as I keep repeating myself and so do you all.