I found another of these great blog posts that completely debunks the notion of Landmark Education as a cult, while persuasively persuading why some misguided souls continue to push this urban legend. I’m not sure if it will do much good, since myths such as Barack Obama’s “muslim” origin or his “foreign” birth seem to persists in the face of any and all evidence, but for those who actually want to read something beyond hysteria, here’s a bit of Eric Schlein’s excellent blog. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing – there’s a lot more there than the short excerpt I put below.
For people who have friends, co-workers, or family members who have taken the Landmark Forum and who have not take the course itself, a common question one will ask is “Is Landmark a Cult”.
The short answer is no it’s not. (There are plenty of reports of organizations who investigate cults as their main purpose as an organization who have not only said it wasn’t a cult but said how great of an education it was).
A Quick Comparison of General Results between Landmark and Cults
- Landmark doesn’t tell you to believe in anything, follow anything, practice anything, or how you should or shouldn’t live your life. They come up with different frameworks to see things in different ways that give one some choice in things they may have thought they had no choice about, allowing them to create breakthroughs in any areas their life that’s important to them in very short periods of time.
- Cults have something they believe in, practice, or have a way of living their life. Cults contain dogma or a system of how to live life.
- Landmark empowers you to live powerfully after taking the Forum or any other course they offer so you don’t have to keep coming back for more. Once you do the Forum, that’s it. You get what you are supposed to get and never need to come back to get the same thing over and over again. They push you back into the world and tell you to not come back. They “teach a man to fish”.
- Cults want you to become reliant on them for your satisfaction and make you addicted to them to validate your life. Consider what Scientologists would do without their church and reading materials. Consider what the Westboro Baptist Church would do without their church. Consider what a cult with a leader would do if they didn’t have a leader anymore.
So it Landmark a cult?
It’s as much of a cult as:
People who love Warren Buffett so much they nod their heads at everything they say, his company is certainly not a cult.
Famous researchers who become their research and anything different they take as an insult, the research in itself is just research and it is not a cult. A Christian saying Christianity is the only way to find God. Christianity in itself isn’t a cult and as a Jew I have found some wonderful insights from that religion. Someone practicing Zen who believes that “clearing your mind” is the only way to being grounded, and living in NYC becomes hard and living in a monastery is the only way to be happy. When that happens, Zen is a constraint.
