Landmark Eduction

[Mr Flibble]

Recently one of my closest friends revealed to me that she has taken part in the Landmark Forum program, and was telling me how much it has improved things for her. I was weirded out by the conversation though as a lot of the things she was saying threw up red flags for me, particularly her repeated statements about it "not being a cult". So as a result I did some googling finding many sites which had the same take on it, basically that it is your standard Multi-Level Marketing scam cult.

Here for example is the Skeptic Dictionary's take on it

So I'm posting here to find out a couple of things. Firstly to see if anyone here has any more information they can give me about this organisation.

Secondly what should I do about it, what is the best way which I could help my friend, who appears to have been taken in fully by it?

[Darth Wong]

Wow. It's amazing how vague the information on that Landmark Forum website is. It's like one big corporate mission statement, with no specifics at all. This paragraph is completely representative of the whole website's general content:

Landmark Education is a global educational enterprise committed to the fundamental principle that people have the possibility of success, fulfillment, and greatness. The ideas, insights, and distinctions on which Landmark Education's courses are based and the results it has produced make Landmark a leader and innovator in the field of training and development.

Seriously, it's all like that. At first you think "OK, that's just a boilerplate paragraph", but it never gets any deeper.

[Stofsk]

Wow. It's amazing how vague the information on that Landmark Forum website is. It's like one big corporate mission statement, with no specifics at all. This paragraph is completely representative of the whole website's general content:

Landmark Education is a global educational enterprise committed to the fundamental principle that people have the possibility of success, fulfillment, and greatness. The ideas, insights, and distinctions on which Landmark Education's courses are based and the results it has produced make Landmark a leader and innovator in the field of training and development.

Seriously, it's all like that. At first you think "OK, that's just a boilerplate paragraph", but it never gets any deeper.

Fuck I know. Flibble and I were IMing about it before, and he sent me the link. As soon as I read a sentence I could tell they were trying to sell me something, but weren't telling me what it was they were selling. That's a big red flag straight away.

[Mr Flibble]

Wow. It's amazing how vague the information on that Landmark Forum website is. It's like one big corporate mission statement, with no specifics at all. This paragraph is completely representative of the whole website's general content:

Landmark Education is a global educational enterprise committed to the fundamental principle that people have the possibility of success, fulfillment, and greatness. The ideas, insights, and distinctions on which Landmark Education's courses are based and the results it has produced make Landmark a leader and innovator in the field of training and development.

Seriously, it's all like that. At first you think "OK, that's just a boilerplate paragraph", but it never gets any deeper.

Some of the criticisms of Landmark that I have read Have said that participants are encouraged to be as vague as possible about what it is with their friends and family when they are trying to recruit them. They are also pushed hard to recruit lots of people. For instance my friend has invited me, and at least two other friends of mine to the final part of her course, which is basically a recruiting session to lure in more people and get more money out of them.

*OT: would a passing mod please correct my typo in the thread title it should be Education.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The reason they say 'its not a cult' a lot is because they've been sued for BEING a cult several times, but nobody can ever prove it because they don't take all your money or make you cut ties with family. Kodiak went to one of their things, he can probably tell you more about it.

I went to the intro meeting, but I couldn't see paying that much for a lesson. Basically they help you figure out your goals and REALLY motivate you into doing them.

[Kodiak]

The entire thing is an education geared toward getting you to understand the issues you have which make you the person who you are. My wife and I both went through both the introductory course and the second course and consider it money well spent. They give you tools for communicating with others, understanding yourself, and helping you to dissect the things in your life that drive you nuts or motivate you and help you figure out how to improve yourself. One of the big things they focus on with you in the first course is creating what they call "possibilities" i.e. deciding a course of action based on what you want in life. They propose the following example to illustrate how the program works in relation to being a successful person:

1. If I have lots of money
2. I'll have a nice car and house
3. Which will mean I'm a successful salesman

They ask you to reframe it in your mind to say
1. I'm creating the possibility of being a successful salesman
2. which means I'll make lots of money
3. And have a nice car and house.

What it boils down to is that it's a seminar teaching you how to see your life and yourself differently, get over stuff, and help you manage your life. I went through the course a few years ago and then decided I didn't have time to continue with it so I left- no hard feelings. You get out of it what you put into it, so I'd encourage you to go the intro meeting with your friend and if it sounds interesting sign-up. They will try to get you to sign up persistently, so if you don't want to do it don't make excuses as to why just say "I don't see any value in this and I'm not signing up". I'm glad my wife and I did it.

edit:
for more info on what they teach Wikipedia is fairly spot-on. From the article:

At the end of the day, I found the Forum innocuous. No cult, no radical religion: an inspiring, entertaining introduction of good solid techniques of self-reflection, with an appropriate emphasis on action and transformation (not change).

[Ariphaos]

Recently one of my closest friends revealed to me that she has taken part in the Landmark Forum program, and was telling me how much it has improved things for her. I was weirded out by the conversation though as a lot of the things she was saying threw up red flags for me, particularly her repeated statements about it "not being a cult". So as a result I did some googling finding many sites which had the same take on it, basically that it is your standard Multi-Level Marketing scam cult.

Here for example is the Skeptic Dictionary's take on it

So I'm posting here to find out a couple of things. Firstly to see if anyone here has any more information they can give me about this organisation.

Secondly what should I do about it, what is the best way which I could help my friend, who appears to have been taken in fully by it?

A relative of mine got hooked on it. The most apt description I've seen is 'a cross between Amway and Scientology'.

[Resinence]

Kodiak you realize you listed skills that a large portion of the population develops on their own eventually?

I really don't see how "decide what you want, plan how to get it, do it" or "figure yourself out" is Sage Advice to be honest. Then again a lot of people seem to never actually take a time out to consider themself or their life, talking without saying anything is more entertaining afterall

[Darth Wong]

It sounds like standard Tony Robbins inspirational self-motivation stuff. I'm not sure what particular benefits this franchise offers. I would actually be curious what the long-term success rate of Tony Robbins customers actually was/is. He was big on testimonials, but testimonials are a notoriously bad way of assessing the success of any given method.

[Darth Wong]

*OT: would a passing mod please correct my typo in the thread title it should be Education.

Yes, it is quite obviously wrong, but if it were corrected then we would lose the hilarious irony of someone misspelling "education".

[UnderAGreySky]

Yes, it is quite obviously wrong, but if it were corrected then we would lose the hilarious irony of someone misspelling "education".

I was hoping that the mods would like their irony with icing on top

Back to topic, I have a friend too who has benefited from it. She went through a few serious emotional troubles around four years back; I've seen her come out of it a much more confident and happier person. She's been happily married for two years now, is one of my closest friends and I'm glad it worked for her.

That said, she tried to convince me to join it... and I was weirded out. There was just something in her descriptions that made me feel like I was joining a... well, yes, cult. But to counter that thought, she did it for two months and hasn't gone back since. So plainly, it is nowhere near Scientology-levels (or of any of India's fly-by-night godmen and cult personalities).

There is another analogue to this, called "The Art of living" which is more direct - they control your diet and make you do exercises and such, along with motivational speeches and stuff. Helped my better half calm down and also quit smoking. And yet... I wouldn't go for it; I'm reluctant to use outside stimuli to change myself. I find it easier to hold on to whatever decisions I've taken if they were done so without outside influences.

[Simon_Jester]

Kodiak you realize you listed skills that a large portion of the population develops on their own eventually?

If I, specifically, am bad at those things, though... why not go to someone with a track record of teaching those skills? If Landmark is actually more effective than just letting people figure it out on their own (big if, I know), then there's nothing wrong with going to them if you don't have those skills and you think it's worth the money.

Again, the real question isn't whether they're teaching an unusual skill; it's whether they teach it well, for the benefit of those who don't have even the common skills.

[Channel72]

They ask you to reframe it in your mind to say
1. I'm creating the possibility of being a successful salesman
2. which means I'll make lots of money
3. And have a nice car and house.

But how is this achieved, specifically? You really need a specialized skill to be successful. If you want to be a successful salesman, you need the necessary skills, e.g. the charisma, experience, whatever. If you don't have those things, you're not likely to be successful. Instead of spending time going to vague seminars like this, I would think it would be more beneficial to spend time improving specific skills, so you can actually be successful. Granted, many people suffer from depression or other problems which make it difficult for them to find the motivation to strive for success, but people like this would surely be better off spending their money on an actual, professional psychiatrist.

[Simon_Jester]

Very probably so.

On the other hand, even though there shouldn't be, there is still a stigma associated with going to a psychiatrist. It's not something you do without having to admit to yourself that there is something fundamentally wrong with you, something that you will not be able to fix out of your own resources and abilities. It's not the same, socially and mentally, as going to a normal doctor for a checkup of your physical health is. Few people are ashamed to go to a doctor because of a nagging cough that won't go away; many would be ashamed to go to a psychiatrist because of a nagging sense of low self-worth.

For people who are borderline (mildly depressed, say, or just plain have fucked-up attitudes toward life that make them ineffective), it's hard to admit that. Pride gets in the way, and the prospect of being committed to paying for a psychiatrist for an indefinite amount of time is a bit daunting.

So while I agree that this is likely to be a lot less efficient than going to a professional psychiatrist, I can see why the program has a niche value for the "merely" mildly dysfunctional.

[Mr Flibble]

Well on Tuesday evening I went to my friend's graduation session for Landmark. I was absolutely disgusted with what was happening. I nearly walked out a couple of times, the only thing that stopped me was two of my other friends were there and I wanted to be certain that they did not sign up.

The whole event was obviously carefully planned. The air-conditioning was on too high. For example they had people who had done the the course "volunteer" to share their experience. It was portrayed as if they were chosen at random, however the speakers talks were too well practised to have been random, and the dead give-away is that one of them was reading off notes.

The message constantly being given to the audience was "you feel insecure about something", "We can make it so you won't feel insecure about anything". There was lots of repetition and emphasis of jargon words and phrases ('don't know that you don't know', 'get it', authenticity, integrity, unreasonable, value, possibility).

One of the speakers spoke of how at one point he had "got it" but his wife hadn't. Apparently she was very upset, and he felt that if she didn't "get it" they wouldn't be able to stay together. This reminded me of how my friend got roped into it. Her ex-boyfriend did the course, then kept spouting this jargon and she couldn't understand what he was talking about (in her words she thought he was from the moon or had joined a cult). This is someone who has done a course which is supposed to have improved communication in relationships, when in fact for them it clearly did the opposite.

When it came to the time for the person who brought you in to ask if you wanted to register, and to try and encourage you, my friend offered to lend us the money to do the course. This is from a friend who a few weeks ago was telling me that she was $1000 short for the month, and is going into a volunteer job. It is also totally out of character for her. At that point before my other friends answered I snapped out, "No it is a Multi-level marketing scam!" and my friend backed off. Fortunately neither of my other friends signed up, and after that we spent much of the evening talking about aspects of the whole thing that we thought were "dodgy".

However the thing which disgusted me most about the evening was the blatant manipulation of parents emotions. At one point the children are taken to a separate room for a "session" of their own. Before they came back, the man at the front said: "Now parents, your children are going to want to do the course, but they don't have any money, so please when they ask, register them, because there is nothing worse than a young person being opened up to new possibilities and opportunities than to have them crushed."

The entire thing focussed on the results of the course, telling you what you would get out of it. At no point did they explain the method they use to achieve these results. Evening talking with my friend she only really talks in the vaguest terms, and mostly about the results, not the method. I'm speaking to her about this on Sunday and will be asking some more direct questions about their methods, because what I have seen online is quite disturbing.

In summary I have rarely been to an evening that has made me so angry before. My advice to anyone thinking about doing Landmark: Stay Away.

[Formless]

Wow. A couple of things jumped out at me from your description I felt like commenting on:

One of the speakers spoke of how at one point he had "got it" but his wife hadn't. Apparently she was very upset, and he felt that if she didn't "get it" they wouldn't be able to stay together.

So instead of helping her, you want to break up? Holy fuck what an asshole.

At one point the children are taken to a separate room for a "session" of their own.

Red flag says "avoid at all costs."

[CaptainChewbacca]

There weren't any children at the thing I went to. I wasn't aware they did it for kids.

[Intio]

At one point the children are taken to a separate room for a "session" of their own.

Ah yes, another piece of wisdom and enlightenment which can only be understood through vague generalites: and by separating children from their parents.

Strange how the most mendacious tactics have to be deployed on behalf of the most sanguine teachings.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm. I think I retract my earlier claim that it has value. That does not sound promising.

[Intio]

I've also heard, anecdotally, that it is a spin-off from Scientology (used to be known as EST) and that it borrows much of the same 'technology' of changing word definitions, and structuring itself based on secrets and select groups within the organisation. This was only from one source who claimed to have had experience with it.