the Greater Nomadic Council

The Landmark Forum

The Landmark Forum is a global, multimillion-dollar organization that claims to be able to change how you live your life over the course of a three day weekend. The crux of its promise is that it will enable you to be more authentic in your interactions with those around you, making your relationships more lasting and real and helping you live your life to its fullest potential. I have been fascinated with the program for a while, as its structure is a strange mix of cult and self-help elements, something that is I suppose not that uncommon now and which I think has substantial implications for those looking to diagnose the state of society as a whole. I was recently invited to one of the introductory meetings of the Forum, and I plan to write an article about my impressions of the program. As a preliminary examination for this article, I just want to throw out a few thoughts on what I find so intriguing and disturbing about this program and others like it.

Part of me is not interested in being a harsh critic of the forum. I don’t want to go on a tirade about how it’s a cult – it’s arguably a one-dimensional viewpoint for understanding something very complex. My impression, from seeing part of the program firsthand and from interacting closely with people in the process of going through the forum, is that the content of the program is not inherently harmful, consisting as it does of various commonsensical notions of living life with authenticity and honesty. However, as presented by the forum, these are the ideological equivalent of candy corn, pleasant when on the tongue but providing little more than the illusion of real nourishment. This is the aspect of the program that I’m most interested in examining as a thought exercise.

But it’s important to point out some of the more obviously scary aspects of the program as well. At the core of the program is the assertion that not only does Landmark have the solution to all of your problems, but that it has the solution to everyone’s problems, and that nothing outside of the Forum is necessary. There are stories on the net (particularly at this encyclopedic rundown of material) of people questioning the tenets of the Forum during meetings and being harshly shouted down by the leaders. These are the sorts of things that suggest the program’s status as a borderline cult. It doesn’t help that the program is ultimately descended from Scientology, by way of a Scientology offshoot called EST, whose charismatic founder, Werner Erhardt, sold the “technology” to others in the early nineties. It’s unclear whether Erhardt, who now lives abroad, still pulls strings at Landmark. The dramatic surface differences between Landmark, which lacks any religious aspect, and Scientology or even EST means that the comparison is not an easy one to make, but perhaps the most intriguing thing about the Forum is how they have translated the psychological tactics of more extreme programs to the seemingly benign language of "efficiency" and "communication" training.

But even setting those issues aside, the actual content of the program is presented in ways that promise to ultimately stunt personal growth and offer cheap emotional rewards. Here are some thoughts:

-The content is utterly ahistorical. There is no acknowledgment that any of the ideas and practices have a source outside of the heads of those who have put together the program. It may sound like snobbery to lament the fact that Plato has no place in this particular discussion of how to live your life, but it is symptomatic of the inherently authoritarian nature of the program. As a moneymaking concern, it must claim unique knowledge and keep its participants under its auspices for as long as possible.

-The use of catchphrases and neologisms points to both the attempt to mask the roots of the Forum’s ideology and the essentially dumbed-down nature of what is being taught. Participants are taught to accomplish their goals by “being unreasonable”, a phrase seemingly intended to add a veneer of spunky attitude and revolutionary fire to the boring concept of following through and overcoming obstacles. Those who are dishonest with themselves about their goals and desires are said to be “running a racket.” Participants must “enroll” themselves and others – by which they mean making a full commitment, though I suspect that the linguistic short-circuit between this concept and the constant drive to recruit new members is not accidental. Even more ridiculous is the idea of participants’ “Already Always Vision,” a translation of “preconception” fit for a kindergartener.

What sense does it make that a program designed to enhance its participants’ communication skills works so hard to distance participants from the world around them by teaching them to speak what is essentially a new language? These terms are uniformly attached to everyday concepts, and can only serve to cloud issues when participants discuss their emotions and relationships with those outside of the circle. Presumably, the sideways glances and outright mockery that these people receive when they start trying to “enroll” their friends in repairing their relationships serve to drive them back to the program, where people understand them.

-The program is premised on a profound paternalism, bordering on authoritarianism. Notice the implication of the participant’s passivity in this description of an advanced seminar:

The Living Passionately seminar promises a profound shift in your relationship to being alive. It leaves you playing the game of life with a renewed sense of purpose, grace, and ease. In the seminar, you will create a personal charter - an invented direction and foundation from which to build a life worth living. You will be left with an unprecedented sense of vitality and an ability always to bring yourself back on course even in the most challenging times.

The language of the Forum’s literature is that of giving you advances in your life, rather than providing you with the tools to advance yourself. In practice, this means that the seminar, rather than being an open realm of exploration, is a highly structured sequence that is largely identical for each participant.

-I’m not even sure I’m ready to get into the frightening implications of coming up with a “foundation from which to build a life worth living” over the course of a two-day seminar, but that this promise would be appealing to the forum’s prospective customers only confirms my assessment that the program’s target market is those who have led relatively unexamined lives, and moreover those who are going through personal crises.

I'm interested in hearing anything you guys are familiar with on questions of psychobabble, nonreligious cults, use of neologisms to dumb-down complex concepts, etc.

A few links:

The Best of Est

Large Group Awareness Training programs

buscaglia.com

Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from Est to Exile

Crazy Therapies : What Are They? Do They Work?

Landmark Forum: Just a Bowl of Cherries?