I see landmark as entering into a symbiotic relationship with a parasitic set of memes. It’s a life changing experience for a lot of people, but Landmark wants to grow and it’ll attempt to drain your resources (money, volunteering time, and social capital) to do so.
I had a coworker who was obsessed with landmark, and eventually wore some of us down to attend the intro night. I too was impressed at how psychoactive the environment was, and it seemed to be really helping people! But I felt concerned for many of the same reasons as OP.
There’s a lot of parallels here with psychedelic therapy. One, it’s cheaper and faster than years of CBT. And two you are in essence letting someone really heat up your mind (especially your self conception) to allow you to anneal out of sticky maladaptive local maximas. As OP says, they induce this open state with:
Exhaustion from long hours and homework
Putting you on stage in front of a crowd and then manipulating the crowd’s response to you. (i.e. manipulating social reality)
Installing active memes with good concept handles. Whether or not these memes reflect reality the mind responds to them in powerful and predictable ways if delivered in the right context (as in Christianity)
Unfortunately while you’re in this state landmark also tries to install a powerful evangelical perogative to sign-up everyone you know, and a belief that if you really cared about your continued development you would take the subsequent (also really expensive) courses.
This makes sense, as organisations who find this technology and don’t do this will be out competed by ones that do. But you’re still giving root access to your mind over to an organisation that wants to use your resources to grow.
My coworker is in a lot of tax debt and yet has spent tens of thousands on landmark courses. I took this as a warning and just did therapy and acid instead.
I see landmark as entering into a symbiotic relationship with a parasitic set of memes. It’s a life changing experience for a lot of people, but Landmark wants to grow and it’ll attempt to drain your resources (money, volunteering time, and social capital) to do so.
I had a coworker who was obsessed with landmark, and eventually wore some of us down to attend the intro night. I too was impressed at how psychoactive the environment was, and it seemed to be really helping people! But I felt concerned for many of the same reasons as OP.
There’s a lot of parallels here with psychedelic therapy. One, it’s cheaper and faster than years of CBT. And two you are in essence letting someone really heat up your mind (especially your self conception) to allow you to anneal out of sticky maladaptive local maximas. As OP says, they induce this open state with:
Exhaustion from long hours and homework
Putting you on stage in front of a crowd and then manipulating the crowd’s response to you. (i.e. manipulating social reality)
Installing active memes with good concept handles. Whether or not these memes reflect reality the mind responds to them in powerful and predictable ways if delivered in the right context (as in Christianity)
Unfortunately while you’re in this state landmark also tries to install a powerful evangelical perogative to sign-up everyone you know, and a belief that if you really cared about your continued development you would take the subsequent (also really expensive) courses.
This makes sense, as organisations who find this technology and don’t do this will be out competed by ones that do. But you’re still giving root access to your mind over to an organisation that wants to use your resources to grow.
My coworker is in a lot of tax debt and yet has spent tens of thousands on landmark courses. I took this as a warning and just did therapy and acid instead.