Does Landmark Teach You To Tell the Truth?

Of course it does! Isn't that the principle? To live your life with integrity and authenticity. You wish and don't hold your breath.

My former partner who succumbed to the lure of Landmark as a way through a mid-life crisis took an advanced course on "communication". One of her tasks was to speak to me about something she had withheld from me. I recall a long and tortuous phone call as she attempted to reveal to me her "omissions", "avoidances", or to be plain, how she had been living a lie.

Her mentor in the course had insisted she carry through her task. At the time I believed her. Why not? Well, because in the end even she couldn't bring herself to tell me the truth.

The truth implicated other friends and actually it was through one of them that I learned the truth when she herself learned it. She passed it on to me. Now I know. The strange effect of this knowledge is to help me come to terms with my situation, not my former partner's.

Landmark didn't help her. But what it did was rather more insidious. It gave her a pretext, a cover, a smokescreen that she could use to pretend to be playing the game and thereby hope to sucker others into believing it. As I did for a while.

Any system or course can be abused as my former partner did with Landmark. That's why it is important to have ways of verifying and testing one's procedures. Landmark resolutely sets itself against any of this.

If it did it would not be scraping the barrel for its suckers to get their money.

How Landmark Legitimates Itself

One of the keys to Landmark's success is the missing element that is in its name. How do I mean this? 

If you google Landmark, what comes up is "Landmark Education". Most forget that second tag. But it is this that enables Landmark to worm its way into the heart of conventional thinking and organizations. And when you have an array of "graduates" from your courses, respectability looks promising.

Universities, for example, are keen on promoting personal self-development plans for their students to equip them supposedly for the workplace. This is precisely the opening that Landmark seeks to insert its programs.

Even law firms without their full knowledge are supporting Landmark with lawyers earning continuing legal education points for taking their courses. But remember, Landmark IS NOT ACCREDITED BY ANY SIGNIFICANT EDUCATIONAL SPONSOR.

Because Landmark uses a variety of volunteers who work with them and their own organizations it eases the process of introducing Landmark techniques into the legitimate workplace.

Added to which we see how graduates can overstep the line when they start to suggest to clients  (I know lawyers who have attempted to sign up clients) or patients (as did the doctor in the French documentary). This becomes unethical.