Saturday 9 August 2008

Why I Have Set Up Ant-Landmark 1

If you are not with Landmark, then you're against it--automatically. In my case my ex-wife joined it. She tried to get me to join and a number of her friends. None of us took the bait.

The way she explained it made the Landmark Forum seem quite benign. The Forum is a three day marathon affair which takes place in room with no windows where the participants are under strict instructions only to do what they are told. This includes when you can use the bathroom, drink and eat. And since it runs from early morning to around midnight, there's a hefty dose of sleep deprivation also. Even at home the participants must do homework which cuts their rest periods to the minimum.

The Forum entails abuse, harassment, and humiliation of the participants to wear them down. France 3 TV made an undercover documentary of a Landmark Forum in Paris, called: Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus.

You can see the documentary here, where it's hosted on the Cult Awareness & Information Centre. The transcript of the program is here.

The program was made in 2004, so it's current. It shows how Landmark uses cruelty and bully tactics to get its way. It refused to discuss the program and indeed has persisted in trying to shut down websites that host it or link to it.

Once inducted members are persuaded to sign up new members, as I've said, and also take more advanced courses, at considerable cost. These courses cost hundreds of dollars.

3 comments:

GuruTruth said...

Yes, in addition to what's described in that documentary about labor issues in France, the company has also been investigated multiple times by the United States Department of Labor. You can view some of those documents related to those investigations here. -- GuruTruth

Anonymous said...

14I wish I have came across with this before I even step foot into one! I was introduced to one and though hey this is cool so I signed up. But I didnt actually attended the three days course until 6 month later, in that first two hours I was starting to get really angry by each sentence being contradictive. When the opportunity arises to have our full refund back I just took it. I wanted to leave that room as fast as I could. Every single landmarkers I've seen who have been involved for lon period of time are all looking weird. The person who introduce me to this shouted at me when I said I left....hmm something definately not right and the fact that there were very vague details makes me feel like I should warn everybody!

Love this website!!!

Karn said...

It seem like you're using some vague terms in this post to obfuscate the truth. Just in the second paragraph, there's this quote:

"This includes when you can use the bathroom, drink and eat. And since it runs from early morning to around midnight, there's a hefty dose of sleep deprivation also."

which includes two points of misleading vagueness, and one falsehood. The forum lasts from 9am (hardly what most working individuals would consider the "early morning") til 10pm at night ("around midnight" is at least a slight exaggeration of this, no?).

Additionally, there is no one policing when you can and cannot go to the bathroom. There are breaks every two and a half to three hours, and you can leave any time you want to between breaks to go to the restroom, get water, or eat, if that's what you need to do.

I won't speak to the other parts of the post, because you're certainly entitled to your opinion about the conduct that Landmark's tactics represent, but I just wanted to clarify some points that you seem to not have the whole truth on.