User:Abd/Landmark Education/Abd/Criticism of Landmark/Abd bliki/Wikipediocracy

A Landmark headache enducer raises many issues around Landmark and how Wikipedia fails to handle controversial subjects, which is a constant Wikipediocracy theme. I am at this point banned on Wikipediocracy, because I confronted libelous attack on certain Wikipedia users. Doxxing users is a common practice on Wikipediocracy, and there is an minor example of it in this thread; it is relatively harmless, so I will cover it. I will support removal on request of teh affected user. (It is, in fact, an example of how false implications and impressions are made, often, by doxxers.)

The original post, my comment will be interspersed.

Landmark Worldwide (T-H-L) and related articles are, possibly, one of the best and I think most obvious examples of where and how wikipedia can go wrong.


 * He's led a charmed life, then. However, I'm not here examining the articles; I've looked at them in the past. I am so accustomed to Wikipedia article being, somehow, off, that I don't recall specifics. I don't recall the articles being terrible. And, remember, I know Landmark well.

I want it understood that this is in no way necessarily an explicit statement of problems regarding editors themselves, although I think that enters into it. But the subjects relating to Werner Erhard (T-H-L), including this article, fall in a very problematic area.


 * He's repeating himself.

Erhard Seminars Training (T-H-L), the first incarnation of the Landmark Forum, [...]


 * EST put on a series of courses, some roughly comparable to later Landmark offerings. The first basic training later became the "Forum," and the intellectual property was acquired by the staff in the early 1990s. Yes, there is a continuity of content, but the material is also subject to constant review and revision. The Forum is essentially a script, presented or "recreated" by a trained leader, and in a controlled environment. Many details have changed.

[...] which is Landmark Worldwide's primary product,


 * It is the introductory training. It is a prerequisite for almost all other trainings. There are periodic exceptions; for example, I have not seen the Forum lately, but there was a program called Direct Access that was recently offered, as a pilot program for a revised Forum. It was not required to be a graduate to take Direct Access.


 * In the Introduction Leader Program, which might be called boot camp for leaders, the Forum Leader responsible for the ILP said, sometime around the beginning of 2012, that "the business of Landmark is not registering people into courses." So what is it? This is not material that can be covered in an encyclopedia, because there will be few, if any, w:WP:RS covering it. The business is stated in the corporate vision, which is to "listen for and reliably deliver that which makes a real difference in the lives of people as to what they care about and what they are actually dealing with."


 * All the courses and trainings and programs (which include individual coaching programs and business coaching programs) are to that end. Registration in courses is a means, not the goal. Sometimes Landmark staff and volunteers forget this, but can be reminded, in my experience.

[...] was a self-help group


 * Very sloppy. I've been extensively involved with 12-step programs, which are "self-help groups." Landmark is not a self-help group. The differences are massive.

[...] which seems to have espoused and advocated some very obviously quasi-religious beliefs,


 * "seems to." Seems "to whom"? What "beliefs"? Landmark training very deliberately distinguishes fact from story, i.e., interpretation. The Forum contains a warning: what we are telling you is not the truth. That is easily misunderstood. They are not lying. But they present what are called "distinctions," which are tools. They are ways of looking at things. For example, "Anything is possible" is a T-shirt design my daughter made to sell to Landmark grads at an event. Does Landmark "espouse and advocate" a "belief" that anything is possible? No. What it does transmit is a great deal more sophisticated than that. It is not a set of beliefs, it is a set of experiences that are routinely generated in the training.

[...] more or less of the Consensus reality (T-H-L) type and specifically apparently advocating the belief that everyone, to an extent, is the creator of their own reality,


 * Again, what is conveyed is "not the truth." Rather, there is a distinction called "being at cause." When one is "at cause," one takes responsibility for "what is." As if one had created it. In the Invented Life Seminar, this is told explicitly as a myth, there is a whole story told. Not truth, but the ancients knew that the myths were not literal reality. They were symbols, ways of conveying something that cannot necessarily be explained, but that must be experienced.


 * Are we actually the creator of our own reality? What would that mean? Most people never examine the "meaning" of "meaning." What we find in the training is that if we make certain declarations, stuff happens. They could be called miracles, except that many involved know that is is merely how the brain works. Or that this is a possibility, at least. Landmark, as an organization, never comes down on one side or another of certain major theological or religious issues. It is firmly concerned with the practical.


 * Landmark trainings are filled with clerics, psychologists, theologians, scientists, and people from all walks of life. Including homeless people. It is the most diverse environment I've ever encountered, considering what is being examined: ontology and the roots and practice of transformation.

and, implicitly, that the consensus reality is more or less the collection of them, at least somewhat determined by the number of people believing in various personal realities, their strength of belief in those personal realities, and how well those personal realities relate to what might be called the consensus reality of the physical world.


 * He's making this up. He's trying to explain something he has not experienced. There is a discussion in the Advanced Course of the "realities." There is


 * Individual reality: what we individually believe is real.
 * Social reality: what is collectively believed is real.
 * The ultimate test of reality.


 * The way this is explained is like this:
 * 1. I believe I saw a bear in my yard. Individual reality.
 * 2. Everyone in the neighborhood knows that bears have been seen. Bears are dangerous. Social reality.
 * 3. The bear rips your head off. Ultimate test.


 * The "ultimate test" has nothing to do with what people believe. I have never seen anyone in Landmark espouse the idea that there is no reality other than what people believe. "Consensus reality" would be "social reality" in the Advanced Course description. Landmark does not claim that the physical world is caused by consensus reality. I've never heard the "hundred monkeys" story in Landmark. Landmark depends on no "woo," as this writer will claim below. (Mind Dynamics was "serious woo," from the descriptions I've read. Erhard dropped that and focused on what he knew worked.)

And if that isn't confusing enough (although it is), [...]
 * Of course it's confusing. He made it up.

[...] Landmark in its various subsequent forms seems to have, basically, taken the forms of the "seminars" or forums offered by Erhard Seminars Training and turned them into their current "Landmark Forums".


 * Essentially, he doesn't know what Landmark is and does, he has only some very sketchy ideas. There is only one "Forum" at any time, it's a script. There are many trainings, the Forum is the entry level course. Each of the trainings is rooted in a script, that is how they can be essentially the same wherever they are offered and led by whomever. There are differences between leaders, the leader is normally not "reading" the script, and they flesh it out in places with their own experience. They are following it, and there is a course supervisor assisting. That will come up. I've served as a "room captain" in an introduction, and that is a mixture of the role of Production Supervisor and Course Supervisor. My job was to "maintain the space," and until I'd actually done it -- and screwed up -- I had no idea what was involved!

[...] Of course, there is nothing at all wrong with that.
 * Generous. Except that Landmark training has just been strongly misrepresented, setting the stage for more misrepresentation. Consider a Wikipedia article. On what would a description of the training be based? He is actually going to raise this point, but does he understand that he fell into the same trap as some of those he will criticize?

[...] Certainly, if such seminars are financially successful, and they were, it makes sense to continue them.
 * It would. However, how are they "financially successful"? Werner Erhard was very successful. However, he sold the property to the staff. Is the staff making money hand over fist? Apparently not. The official claim is that executives are paid midrange for the training and development industry. Forum Leaders are staff, as are certain Center employees. Staff is paid. However, Center staff is famously underpaid. There is high turnover. Nobody cares, because being on Center Staff is considered advanced training. Most of the work of presenting the trainings is done by volunteers. Most courses are led by volunteers, highly trained Leaders. It is only the Forum Leaders who are paid. I do not know how much, but I do know that Landmark bleeds Leaders, because anyone with that level of training in this work is in high demand for business consulting. One of my participants in a training where I was a coach had hired an ex-Forum leader for business coaching. $500 per hour. He said she was well worth it.


 * The training originated in a convergence of sales technology and philsophy, including what was called New Age philosophy at the time, which was, however, rooted in ancient traditions, as is mentioned in the Wikipediocracy thread.


 * Even if what seem to be the cornerstone beliefs of the original seminars are basically glossed over in subsequent incarnations, because those beliefs may have been too "New agey" for continued credibility.


 * No. That's silly. There were no "cornerstone beliefs." That's a fundamental ontological error. There was a set of experiences, and Erhard had been trained in transmitting them. I assisted at an Advanced Course run by Charlene Afremow, who trained Werner Erhard in prior work, Mind Dynamics. Erhard was a trainer for Mind Dynamics before deciding to create his own work. Charlene was amazing. In her seventies, a powerhouse, sharp and clear.

Nothing wrong with that either.
 * Aside from being wrong.

In a sense, the Forum can be as effective as a non-military form of "boot camp" similar to that run by Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman. And, yes, some companies would really rather welcome seeing some of their less disciplined employees experience and benefit from such training. And some people as individuals may themselves realize that they might benefit from exposure to such.


 * What I've seen is top executives doing the training and then, yes, they want employees to do it. But it's not simply the "less disciplined ones." It can also be those who are "over-disciplined," rigid, stuck in any way, perhaps judgmental, blaming, unable to work well with others, etc. Here, he's talking about training, which is more realistic.

So, everything's fine and dandy. Up to a point. That point is, more or less, now. Landmark continues to function as an employee-owned for profit corporation that, according to one of its executives, sells "inspiration."


 * I've given the corporate vision above. It is indeed staff-owned, and Center staff are included. After a year, they start to vest. Landmark, however, has never declared a dividend, so nobody is making money from being an owner. The the owners, however, elect the Board. And if they "believe" in anything, they believe in the mission, that's why they are there.


 * However, they really can't be pinned down as to what that "inspiration" actually is.


 * Landmark has been called, by some with long experience with it, a Mystery school. The Wikipedia article (it's redirected to) doesn't convey the idea, though, it's too historically rooted. Western esotericism may be better, but the gnosis involved is not of "cosmology or metaphysics," it is knowledge of the self. Or Self, an important concept in the training, and that Self is not the individual self, it's something that transcends the individual. And that is directly experienced in the training. At least that's my explanation, and I've been told by old-timers that I explain this better than anyone. But ... that may not be saying much. Erhard said that "understanding is the booby prize."


 * My daughter just brought me her iPhone and asked me to ask Siri, "What does the fox say"? Siri answered with a secret phrase. Asked again the question, Siri said, "It is an ancient mystery, you will never know."

If the "inspiration" could be realized by, say, buying a book which is much cheaper than the Forum, then that would reduce the number and frequency of people taking part in the Forum, which of course would cost the company money.


 * If that could be done, it would have been done. The writer here has a concept of "inspiration" as some set of words. It's not. It's a state of being. With that state, anything becomes inspiring. Without it, nothing is. How does one transmit a state?


 * In the Forum, they talk about learning to ride a bicycle. Can you learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book? Yet once you know how to do it -- the "secret" of balance -- you know how to ride a bicycle for the rest of your life.


 * The writer also thinks of those who run Landmark as being motivated primarily by profit. It's just not so. It's a job, for some. Nobody gets commissions. It's run like a business, if a Center doesn't have numbers, it will eventually be closed. However, Center staff simply doesn't care that much about money, they would not be working at a Center if they did. Forum Leaders are paid reasonably well, but work very long hours with very extensive travel, I've been in a conversation with more than one Forum Leader how it was to be away from family so much.


 * One Forum Leader was an extremely successful businessman. He's making much less money now as a Forum Leader. Why do they do this?

And, of course, since the apparently now-former object of some of the old Erhard trainers is now apparently disavowed by the new corporate management, as being too philosophical/religious, that clearly can't be what the "inspiration" that is being sold is, because it is already publicly known and discussed, at least to a degree, so Landmark can't continue to sell it, and also overtly philosophical/religious, which would mean it would make it not unreasonable for Landmark to be counted as a part of a "new religious movement" or "cult," which are terms Landmark apparently really hates today.


 * What a convoluted sentence! Landmark is selling inspiration, all right, but it was never "philosophical/religious," the way the writer is thinking. It was exquisitely practical and immediate. The Forum is a confrontation with the reality of one's life, of the "Genesis of Identity," and generally nobody tells the participant what's so about them, that would not stick; though sometimes a Forum Leader will just say it, and if the Leader is skilled, which is the norm, the participant gets it. Most people get it through listening to others. And this is a point of resemblance with self-help groups. But it's not a self-help group, it merely resembles it in this way.


 * One might come to see, in a moment, the cause of every failure in one's life. The miracle is that people do this and take responsibility for it, as being choices made, sometimes as young as five or so.


 * It's empowering not because it was actually a choice, -- how much choice does a five-year old have? -- but because, framed as a choice, it is then within the sphere of possible action. If it was my choice, I can choose something different. If it was their fault, I'm powerless.


 * Until we examine the roots of identity -- which includes what we believe -- we think that all this is "just the way it is." How could I make a choice about what I believe? I simply believe the truth! I have no choice about that!


 * But we come to see how we created those beliefs. It is *not* that we create "reality," but rather we create our experience of it, how it occurs to us. I mentioned the program, Direct Access. I wasn't present for that, but I understand that Direct Access refers to the access to power through our occurring, which is where we have choice. I can, in fact, choose how something occurs to me. Most people think of things as simply "being" good or bad.

This apparently includes reasons for it not publicizng itself too much by the term Large group awareness training (T-H-L),


 * You should have seen me in the Introduction Leader Training. One of the things we were to do was to memorize the Corporate Questions, and one of them was "Is Landmark a Large Group Awareness Training." I had a lot of difficulty with that, because I'd studied the history of Landmark and I knew all the skeptical and hostile opinions, and LGAT was a term invented to describe Erhard's training. The official answer is No. But it is a Large. Group. Awareness Training. However, the term LGAT has been appropriated for other purposes, and has come to carry connotations that don't apply to Landmark.


 * The writer here would want Wikipedia to present a crisp conclusion. Is it an LGAT? Wikipedia, in fact, does not properly do that.


 * The same is true for "cult." There are academics who study cults. They do not classify Landmark as a cult. Landmark is called a cult by some "anti-cultists." It's highly misleading. So Landmark sues people who call it a cult, in media. And they usually win. It's libel. What does "cult" mean? To some people, any group of people who seem to have idiosyncratic ideas -- i.e., different from what the people believe -- is a cult.


 * However, Landmark does have certain traits that can resemble a cult. It is missing others, though, generally the highly negative traits. "Cult traits" would include the specialized language I call "Landmartian." (That is my own coinage, but anyone who has done Landmark training knows exactly what it means.) Ordinary words, in the training, are given new meanings. The glossary here was my first Landmark-related project, I was in my "free seminar" that comes with the Forum, and I announced it there. It was welcomed. People in the trainings are cautioned not to use this language in talking with non-graduates. But they do anyway.


 * It is a specialized language, which is needed in any field. In my Forum, I mentioned my Wikipedia experience. The Forum leader said one word, and it was completely enough for me. "Racket." In the training, the meaning of "racket" becomes completely clear and, for me anyway, inescapable. Rackets have a characteristic sound, a certain way of being. But, dammit! I was right!


 * That belief in personal rightness is, as well, characteristic of a racket. This did not mean that I was "wrong." It means that my reality had become tightened, constricted, by my own beliefs and choices. I needed to take on "empty and meaningless," another distinction that is often misunderstood. Landmark is not claiming that there is no meaning to life, but rather than what we call meaning is invented, and is typically highly limiting. So invent something else! Or invent nothing and see what happens!

[...] which is itself associated with the Human potential movement (T-H-L), which is itself associated with NRMs and that whole area the current Landmark does not want to be counted as part of. Not that anyone can blame them.


 * He has invented a story to create a reason why it's impossible to write a fair article about Landmark.

So we wind up with an existing company that sells "inspiration" of a kind it cannot or will not describe,


 * It doesn't "sell" inspiration. It does sell courses, trainings, and customers are typically highly satisfied. I had occasion to call every graduate still in the database in my region, I'd requested the list to create a graduate's group, something outside of Landmark, a social group. I was given about a hundred names in my region of Western Massachusetts, about two hours from the Boston Center. I encountered nobody that was dissatisfied. I found one woman who didn't "like" Landmark. Her reasons? It was pretty funny. The leaders stand on a stage (a low platform). She thought that people should be on the same level. It was a political thing. She'd gotten a great deal out of the training. (I had called her because she had done the entire curriculum for living, so I was looking for people with community organizational experience, i.e., the subject of the final course in that curriculum.)


 * Graduates are very recognizable on the phone. They answer the phone like they are having a good time.


 * So, yes, people are inspired by the work. But they create that themselves, and Landmark is very clear about that. Landmark provides a context for it.

[...] partially related to (1) philosophical/religious ideas which it no longer necessary wants to be associated with because such ideas are often too woo to get companies to pay for sending their employees to the forums and
 * It was never about that. I'm not sure of numbers, but it is probably under 10%, Forum participants who are sent by their companies. The idea that Landmark has changed its "philosophy" in order to be able to sell to companies is preposterous, to this trained student of Landmark.


 * However, the scripts are constantly evolving. One big change from the days of Werner Erhard. One of Erhard's distinctions was "asshole." "We are all assholes." By that would be meant, "We are inauthentic, we lie." We claim to be something, then we are not, and yet we condemn others for what we do. It was his shorthand, and it was very effective to be called an "asshole" by Erhard, I've seen the videos. He wasn't insulting the person! He was bringing them face-to-face with the reality of their life, and he was really good at it. The answer to "You're an asshole" is "Yes." No defense, and no guilt. Just acceptance of reality. And then something else becomes possible.


 * I'm laying out here much of the ontology. How's it working? The normal new graduate to a friend who asks what it was like: "Well, it was ... amazing ... it was ... aw, you had to be there! Want to come to my Tuesday night session, see for yourself?"

(2) if the inspiration could be described in a book, the reason for taking part in the Forum kinda disappears.
 * That could be true. But how important is chemistry lab for studying chemistry? The concept here is that there is something to be learned. That is not what Landmark does, and they are very explicit about it. There is something to be practiced. For some people, it may be their first time. One might say that these learned something. But they found that something in their own experience, the Forum is designed to do that. Training is not about learning, as such, it is about practicing something, the training language would be "developing mastery," so that a skill becomes reliable.

But, clearly, like with military boot camp, it can and apparently does cause at least some people to achieve some sort of Eureka effect (T-H-L) which can in some cases help them a lot.
 * That's fair enough. The term in the training is "popping." I don't know how many people actually "pop" in the Forum. I didn't. Rather, I heavily intellectualized it. I recognized it. That is, I could see what they were doing, from long experience with other schools. Other esoteric schools. I saw that they were going it more powerfully and effectively than I'd ever seen before. What might take years in a Zen training, for example, was showing up in a weekend. And without drugs!


 * I popped in the Advanced Course. That's where I realized how I'd created disconnection from people, for so many years. And with the realization came freedom to connect, and I routinely demonstrated it, that day and ongoing. I've told the story in a few places....

And people who have received such an experience are of course not unreasonably attributing it to Landmark, and believe it deserves respect and credit for that.
 * Landmark does deserve respect and credit. But I created my own breakthough. That is, in fact, what they do, they set up conditions for that. If it were something they were "teaching" the person, it would not have this depth and power.

And, of course, most of the people in the corporate organization are in some way closely tied to the older est, including its president.


 * This is misleading. First of all, the "corporate organization," i.e, the corporate office in San Francisco, isn't the operating core of Landmark. That would be the body of Forum Leaders. Many of them were involved back then, yes. But they no longer call people "assholes."


 * There is no cult of personality in Landmark. Most people doing the Forum today do not hear the name, "Werner Erhard." He's not mentioned, generally. The work is not about him. That, by the way, is another distinction between Landmark and "cult." Yes, Werner's brother is the chief executive. And nobody cares. Nobody reads the "inspiring words of the Harry Rosenberg." The corporate questions were the deadest body of material I've ever encountered in Landmark. I passed the questions. That was the hardest thing I ever did in Landmark. I remained authentic. The trainers just wanted me to know the official Landmark positions, and I demonstrated that I did.


 * So Landmark is a corporation, that behaves like a corporation. Big surprise! However, Landmark, as an enterprise, would fall on its face if not for the community that sustains it. Landmark depends entirely on word-of-mouth for "sales." If the training didn't work, if people were not seeing value in it, it would die very quickly.

So, at the end, we have a group which has specifically said it is most emphatically not a continuation of the older est,
 * Really? Where? There is an issue of language here. Landmark is not merely a continuation of est, nor am I a continuation of my father. But I am his son. We are not unconnected.


 * That something was characteristic of est does not mean that it is characteristic of Landmark. So?

although it seems to engage in pretty much the same activities as est and its product is sold on the basis of making possible "aha" moments like est did.
 * And so were Lifespring and a few other organizations.

But, of course, that new corporation can't say what sort of specific inspiration it does give people, both for obvious monetary reasons and because at least some of those moments might not now be what it wants to identify itself with.
 * He's complaining that there is no reliable information on what the "inspiration" is. It's nonsense. He is imagining that the only information about a product would come from the company that sells the product. For Wikipedia purposes, very little would be from that source, and would be presented as coming from the company, not as fact, not with a sophisticated article.

And the current company, not unreasonably, is extremely shy of the media, because most independent sources will discuss the historical connections and views the current company doesn't want to associate itself with.
 * Again, he invented that. Landmark is not "shy of the media." Where does he get this?

So, what the hell do you do with the topic, when the few independent reliable sources out there which discuss the topic do generally prominently draw a link between the old and the new that the new denies as much as they can without going into any particular details about their product, which would reduce the saleability of that product?
 * What you do is what you do with any Wikipedia article, you gather material from reliable sources, and there is plenty. You present this neutrally and verifiably. Many members of the media have attended the Landmark Forum and have reported their experience. There have been studies of the work, and how it works, published academically. Sure, much of that was about est. So you don't present that in the Landmark article, you present it in the Erhard Seminars Training article. The Landmark article presents the facts about Landmark, including the known and widely covered transfer of the IP to Landmark.


 * How you balance the material is subject to editorial consensus. In the Wikipedia mess, the user Cirt will be mentioned. Cirt came here and began to add highly critical material to the resource here. I forked the resource, allowing him maximum freedom to present the material he wanted to present. We could do that here, that option is not open on Wikipedia. However, the Wikipedia article could provide a sister wiki link to Wikiversity. And it is actually possible to seek consensus here, without the pressure of the single-article Wikipedia conditions. The topic can be *discussed* here, which is always a problem on Wikipedia. Later, I've been able to work with Cirt on Wikiquote. Cooperation builds cooperation.

(this will be continued with what followed on Wikipediocracy)