Landmark Forum
December 18th 2008 -
Von and I and friend A went to one of the Landmark Forum graduation things for our friend N. We were a bit worried. A cursory browse of the web shows up all kinds of worrying business practices, and Germany have them on their list of cults. They are, as far as I can tell, a group therapy self-help course centred around the idea that people are too obsessed with how they appear to others.
So we prepared ourselves and went along, braced against the hard-sell, but with relatively open minds because N is smart and it would be rather condescending to assume she was being suckered. She’d done a three-day course for $500-odd, which is definitely pushing her budget, but she was very happy with it and we wanted to show support (though we did recognise she was inviting us because that’s how the forum gets new recruits, which is a bit cultish).
Anyway, the talk was mostly testimonials and trueisms, and we left before they separated us into smaller groups (where I suspect the pressure would have started), mostly because it was getting late and we wouldn’t have been with N anyway. However, despite the paucity of data about the course, I left feeling much less concerned. Unlike your typical cult, it seems more about making you reconnect with your friends and family, which is no bad thing. But more importantly, they seem about giving options to people who can’t figure their own way forward (like most other self-help books and programs). That seems OK, even if they did seem to be advising us to turn off our critical thinking (or as they phrased it, the little voice in our heads).
And it did make me think. There’s an implicit challenge with any kind of self-help program – “oh, you think you don’t need us? How little you know.” Von and I have spent a lot of time over the last two years talking about philosophy and truth and meaning, but self-examination is not a normal state of being, and is very hard to do without some kind of support network. You need someone to call you on bullshit. Von’s my anchor. Lots of people have religion, and that’s their anchor. But there are still more for whom religion or relationships doesn’t fulfil that role, and feel adrift. I’m very lucky.
Claire Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 3:41 am
So true, I feel the same about Aodh…and the family. We are indeed lucky. Still, I wouldn’t mind religion sometimes because it’d be so much easier to just believe in a few things that fill in the big scary gaps.
Jen Says:
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:13 am
Yeah.. know what you mean.. try explaining life and death and truth to four year olds… it would be so much easier to explain it in terms of a higher being!!