Landmark - or - I, Too, Have An Opinion

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Everyone seems to be talking about the Landmark Forum, and it's time I added my $0.02. It's a topic I've wanted to talk about ever since I first heard of it from nimbupani a couple of months back.

A couple of caveats: I'm not going to recap the discussion so far over here, it would take too long. Click on the links above, and prepare for a lengthy read. Sorry. Second, I only heard of something called the Landmark Forum a couple of months back from my dear nimbu, and have no first hand knowledge of it. I did, however, form an instant opinion, as I often do, and I find that it hasn't changed even as I learn more about the whole outfit.

That opinion is just this: I think it's a harmless self-help group, better than most others in its league, but of no particular use or significance.

1. Harmless, because

(a) The Landmark Forum does not pretend. Their website clearly states that theirs is a profit-making business: no mumbo-jumbo about how the organisation's founders are doing this as a selfless service for the salvation of Mankind, yadda yadda yadda. Good for them.

(b) Nimbupani says that there are no unreasonable restrictions placed on participants. I've seen several websites allege that toilet breaks are "strongly discouraged", that the whole environment is one conducive to intensive brain-washing etc.. but I had my doubts as to the authenticity of these allegations (my innate faith in the smartness of people tells me that nobody would agree to such a ridiculous proposition), and now my doubts have been confirmed by someone well acquainted with the Forum. If anybody is free to get up and leave whenever they wish to stretch their legs, and nobody is pressuring them to do otherwise, what's the harm?

(c) It does not teach bad shit. No kill-them-infidels, no let's-retire-to-the-mountains-and-meditate-our-lives-away, no Catholic-style guilt trips that would render self esteem non-existent. At least, not from what I've read about it. Straightforward, common sense philosophy.

The Caveat: I don't like the hours. 9 a.m. to 12 midnight, for three days in a row? This hints at an attempt to get the participants in a "zone" (which is a polite word for a trance)... I have no doubt that this makes people easy to convince and to break down. You might be able to get up and leave anytime you want, but to get the full experience of the Forum, you'd need to sit it through. A lot of the suspicion surrounding the Forum rightly stems from this, and I think Landmark's image would improve tremendously if the hours were a little less outlandish.

2. Self-Help Group, because

We need to forget the semantics of Landmark here, for a moment. Whatever the overanalytical justification anyone tries to come up with to say that Landmark isn't really a self-help group, you can't escape the fact that it is. Otherwise, what's it for? I've heard (read) many proponents say, "nobody NEEDS the Landmark Forum", but what they're really saying is, "nobody THINKS they need the Landmark Forum, but everybody ACTUALLY does." The inference you draw from any such program that claims to make your life better in some way is that there is something in your life that CAN be made better, i.e., your life isn't perfect, and the program will try to fix the imperfection. Ergo, it's a self-help program.

3. Better Than Most Others In Its League, because

... of item (1), mostly. It's harmless, for most part, and it doesn't teach a bad philosophy and it's a program based on reason and on using your mind rather than "transcending" the mind, also known as mouthing mantras and following the cult leader.

This is more than I can say for both the Chinmaya Mission and the Art of Living (and I can speak from first hand experience for these two cults). Cut a long story short, in Chinmaya they tried feed me a load of bull; in Art of living, they just told me the load of bull was divine and didn't I, deep inside, want to feel truly divine, as opposed to how doing Sudarshan Kriya made me feel?

So.

But there is also a However here. At its heart, Landmark is no different from any of these other cults because it tries to sell you the same thing: a wonderful philosophy that can address everything that's wrong with your life. No, don't jump on me for using these words... this is the promise of the whole program and the word of many proponents, that it wil radically transform your life. I don't think anything can do that. Call me a skeptic; I will take it as a compliment.

4. But Of No Particular Use Or Significance, because

There is no such thing as a cure-all. This is self-explanatory, but to avoid sounding simplistic, I will elaborate.

Let's say I put a bowl of fruit on the table. A couple of apples on one side of the bowl, a few pears, a bunch of grapes, a banana sticking out, in my opinion, quite artistically. Let's show this bowl of fruit to a bunch of people and ask: "What's wrong with this?"

The nutritionist will say: It's missing flavinoids or anti-oxidants or (insert scientific-sounding word of your choice).

The mom who is supporting an entire family will say: I'm not even looking at that, it's too expensive a snack to be feeding my kids.

The interior decorator will say: I'm all for using fresh fruit as decoration, but it's going to be a pain to change the fruits every few days as they rot. Plus, there's no blue here to match my drapes.

The artist will say: That banana sticking out is so wannabe artistic. Let's rearrage this bowl to be more balanced.

You get the point.

Now say that that bowl of fruit is your life, and the different people who're looking at it are the different philosophies with which you will try to deconstruct your life. (Nifty analogy, eh? Read on, it gets better.)

The Landmark Forum is just one such philosophy. You could use it and come out harping about how your bowl of fruit was so wannabe artistic all along, and you never knew, and you never even knew that you didn't know, and how your bowl of fruit is so much better balanced now.

Well, good for you. But stop and think: did you even need your bowl of fruit to be artistic in the first place? Sure, you thought it wasn't perfect, and you rearranged it yourself sometimes because it wasn't, but ... do you need it to be artistic? And furthurmore, would it be so bad to have that banana sticking out the way you originally liked it?

I don't want to belabour the point, but I want to say just one more thing: so now your bowl of fruit is perfectly artistic. But it turns out, artistic isn't all there is to it, because you're missing flavinoids, and you're expensive, and you have no blue. And your Artistic Rearrangement Class doesn't have a clue how to do this other stuff.

I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't want to fork out $750 - or even $50 - to have someone convince me to arrange my bowl of fruit another way. Especially not if I don't have problems with the way it is right now. And I would worry about anyone who was willing to spend that kind of money fixing what simply ain't broke.

(If I did have problems in life, I'd try the free solutions first - like a marathon bull session with my significant other, or renting a self-help book from the library.)

Philosophic crazes have been a big part of my life... anyone who knew me a couple of years back will tell you what a nutjob I was over Objectivism. I read all I could about it, I tried to convert everyone I knew, I argued and rationalised and blogged about it.

And then I did a marvellous thing: I took a break from it. My fanaticism wore off, my books stopped falling apart and my friends started drifting back to me. It turns out, there are other philosophies that will resonate just as strongly with you; it just depends on what you need most in life when you're reading a particular thing.

I still believe in Objectivism just as much as I believed before. It's just that I see a larger picture now. Objectivism taught me to think in terms of right and wrong, that's it's 'speciality', it's 'occupation' with respect to my bowl of fruit. From other people and places and books, I've looked at my life from the viewpoint of someone interested in, say, optimising my potential, living my life efficiently, appreciating beauty, etc.

The Landmark Forum might teach you a couple of things, sure, but I'm betting it's nothing you couldn't live without or could get from anywhere else... and it's nothing anyone should be forking out big money for. That's the only reason I don't like it. Otherwise, I think it's a harmless self-help group, better than most others in its league, but of no particular use or significance.