What Does Landmark Do To The Brain?

Here is a talk from TED by Diane Benscoter, a former Moonie, on how cults rewire the brain. I include Landmark Education in this definition.

A Personal Memoir of the Landmark Forum "Brainwashing"

In a video called, "brain washing in a godless big business cult", a woman tells of her experience in a Landmark Forum. You can hear the hurt, the distress, the fear in her voice. I felt distressed after watching it, but I knew it was heartfelt.

There is one point at 6 minutes in when she describes a particular episode in the weekend Forum. Participants are told to imagine their greatest fears and that those around them are also creating fear. The Forum leader shouts at them and harangues them until many break down and sob and shake. Many others have focussed on this particular point in the Forum as one of its most destructive moments. Here's her video:

Why I Have Set Up Ant-Landmark 2

Doing Landmark Forums and advanced courses has fallout. Members change their lives dramatically, often destructively to those close to them.

Weber says everything is peeled away until there is nothing. Therefore there is no truth but only multiple interpretations, an infinite array of possibilities. Life can be constructed anew. History is bunk.

If this is so and you don't like something, get rid of it. We know anecdotally that members have divorced, quit jobs, left families, and more after doing Landmark courses. They are on a high where anything is possible. We also know that oftentimes they come down and wonder what the hell they've done with their lives.

They've been brainwashed. And they are left bereft.

I have an interest because my wife decided that her possibility was to divorce me because she had not been honest with me in our relationship. I have to live with aftershock. I still am.

Why Anti-Landmark is Necessary

Have you ever been part of the Landmark Forum or been affected by it? Maybe a family member or friend has taken part in their introductory forum. I know how you feel.

Landmark exists to induct people through a form of brainwashing that means that Landmark can do no wrong. But everyone outside, those who don't participate in Landmark become strangers to the insiders.

Landmark derives from Werner Erhard's "est", which was an attempt to break people down over a period of three days in a closed environment with little sleep and food, so they no longer believed anything except what they were told.



Landmark continues to do this today. The purpose of Landmark is to get its members to bring in a constant stream of new members. This activity is often given out as "homework" to course takers. This is the way Landmark continues to make its money. It's looking for suckers and it finds them.