Don't Drink the KoolAid: Choosy Goes to Landmark

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Wow, I did a weird thing! Not that unusual for me to do weird things, I suppose. But this particular one was out there in my case.

I attended the Landmark Forum! I didn’t know much about it when I signed up. I went to an introductory meeting with a cool friend of mine. Then I did some research. Which, of course, made me skeptical and a little nervous about going.

Then…I went anyway. Yeah, I know. Crazy!

So, they shut you in this room for 15 hours a day for three days and tell you how to be better people. And everything bad I read about it is basically true: You don’t get reasonable breaks, there’s way too much “hard sell” to get your friends and family to sign up, and you sit in one place so much that it ends up being no less than physically gruelling.

But the REALLY weird thing is, I got a lot of great stuff out of it too. It was a lot of just simple philosophy, but presented in a way so that you could really see its application to your life. The mob mentallity was firmly in action, but it was focused on “Let’s live active, happy lives and not dwell on the past.” So I didn’t think the whole “cult/borg brain” thing was BAD when used in that way.

I learned a bunch of stuff about myself, got completely jazzed up to do some more things with my life, to take on more projects, and to ditch some bad habits.

And I’m never going back again!!! I skipped the last evening…I could NOT FACE another five hours on one of those stupid chairs and I wasn’t listening to any more recruiting propaganda.

Is it weird to think something is kind of great, but kind of creepy too? Has anyone else attended a Landmark Forum? Does anyone have any interesting opinions on it?

L
P.S. I don’t care what your opinion is, I’m just curious if you have one.

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I know some people who have done this and your experience seems to reinforce the impressions I already had about The Landmark from listening to them.

Overall, it seems similar to what attending church was like for me.

Learn some good things about how to live and treat others and at the same time be forced to endure some really annoying, unpleasent and painful parts too.

The diff of course being you only had to go to this for 3 days. I was forced to go to church 3 times a week for 18 years. I think that’s enough time in that sort of environment for me.

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See, I didn’t run into anyone during or after this weekend who had a MIXED reaction. It was either people who were completely “transformed” and were signing up their parents, grandparents, children, friends, and pets for the next forum. OR people who got up and walked out because they thought it was AWFUL and were convinced they were being brainwashed.

I feel sort of bad because the woman who “recruited” me is terrific. She’s a co-worker and is sweet as pie. She would like me (of course) to do other Landmark classes with her and there is NO way I can do that. I just couldn’t take any more.

In her case, the pressure to do more is genuine. I mean, it’s not driven by a desire to gain more income for Landmark, it’s because she is NICE and wants ME to gain from more classes. But I still can’t take any more, no matter what the motive.

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So, just exactly what is it? It sounds like Amway for the soul.

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Ahahaha! Amway for the soul! That’s sort of what it is.

It’s a weekend long ‘self-improvement’ seminar where you’re told that YOU are responsible for your problems and that YOU can decide what your future will be. You can look it up online at www.skepdic.com or at the official Landmark site http://www.landmark-education.com.

They teach an amalgam of philosophy and psychology that makes great sense, in all honesty. I found it to be more than just a cheering squad of “Yes, I can!” If you know what I mean. They give you tools and the motivation to put the past where it belongs and stop letting it affect your future.

You do exercises in which you practice dealing with fear, seeing how powerful you are as a human being, etc. They are great!

Hurrah, right! But the catch is that you have to sit in a hard chair for 15 hours a day with only one meal break and no food allowed in the room (I’ve had a gastric bypass, so this resulted in my becoming extremely ill).

I’m not joking…there are really THREE 15 hour days and then another five hour evening which I skipped because I just couldn’t take any more. It seriously begins to be physically painful.

The other drawback is that people are asked to “share” their experiences and how they plan to draw from this “new” information. Well, that’s great if the person sharing is intelligent, understands the concept, and isn’t a jerk. Otherwise, you could end up listening to some idiot expound on his divorce as if he were attending a 12-step meeting. The forum leader tries to stop most of this, but it goes on anyway.

They suggest…or really STRONGLY suggest, I should say…that during breaks and overnight if you have people in your family or other relationships with whom things are strained or difficult, that you call them NOW and get straight with them. Tell them that you are now taking responsibility for the problems in the relationship and you are now open to being in a happy friendship with them.

Well…who can argue with that? It turns out that there were tons of people “sharing” that they’d called the father they hadn’t spoken to in 20 years and they were going fishing next weekend. I have a great relationship with both my parents, but my mother was quite abusive when I was a child and I felt like I really let go of making HER responsible for MY shortcomings as an adult.

But they have a really bad relationship for in effect, locking people into a room. They tell you up front, ‘none of this is TRUE,’ meaning that it’s just some theories you can put to use in your life and there are OTHER theories that are just as viable…this isn’t the one true way to enlightenment. But then anyone who suggests another method during the forum is really shot down by the leader.

I also found that people can be enormously resistant to the notion that they are responsible for their own problems. So that Landmark has a bad reputation not only for using cult-like techniques (they’ve been sued by people who had psychotic breaks after forums), but also because people get up and walk out when someone suggests that it isn’t their fathers fault their such an asshole.

There’s nothing to SELL really, except classes and seminars. And I wouldn’t benefit one iota from signing my mother up. The entire weekend cost $410.

Wow, I didn’t realize I had so much to say about it.

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ChoosyChipsAndCeilingWhacks I’m glad you seemed to have gotten something out of it. I read just a little of the stuff on their site which really didn’t say anything to me other than here’s how to join up. Yep. Amway meets Dr. Phil, just as I suspected.

Thanks for the link to skepdic.com. It looks like somwhere I could spend huuuuuuuuge amounts of time. Like I needed another one of those. Yeah. Gee. Thanks. :stuck_out_tongue:

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How have I missed 1,200+ posts by a guy named ChoosyChipsAndCeilingWhacks :confused:

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Because
a) I’m not a guy.
b) I used to be SexyWriter.

I got tired of my old handle and thought this one was better. How do you like my new identity?