Landmark Education

Last night Ruth (this is the person from my The Game post that has recently been upgraded from coworker to friend) joined me for a night of fun at my first Landmark Education class. If you haven’t heard of these guys, you have to read the Wikipedia article on them to get the scoop. They are a professional development business/group/cult that transforms aimless, hopeless, malcontents into laser-focused, empowered, fully-realized, breakthrough…oh, you get it.

We were greeted at the door where the head honcho (Greg) introduced himself and ran down the night’s plans. Right off the bat my expectation of a two-hour show was shattered when Greg explained that we’d be in four a 3.5-hour class. Given that neither Ruth or I had dinner, I immediately said that we’d be leaving early.

The night started when a classroom (replete with old-style chalkboards and chalk) convened and Greg collected volunteers from the audience to explain how Landmark had changed their lives. Most were capable speakers which displayed difficiencies more in their personality than their speaking style. But Greg was an expert if not master of empassioned rhetoric. He told a story of his aging mother and her ill-health that teared every female eye in the house and a few mens’, too. While I have no doubt that Greg’s wavering voice was a genuine display of his emotion, I wonder if he was giving the room the Michael J. Fox treatment: let loose a scripted display specifically rehearsed to fire an emotional response.

After the testimonials, we were led into a smaller workshop by host Ricky. In this room were five guests (myself and Ruth included) and two plants. Or shills. Or perhaps students that had failed the course the first dozen or so times. I was tough to tell. Either way, they were overly-enthusiastic about the material and tripping over themselves to walk us through it. Kind of like a coked-up car salesman.

Ricky started to lead us through a maze of tactics common to self-help and motivational gurus. Kinesthetic anchors, repetetive use of catch-phrases, unwavering avoidance of negative statements, and permanent high-energy bodies with pasted-on fatuous smiles. At several points Ricky got so deep into the Landmark terminology (“you’ll have a breakthrough when your past-future becomes your present-past”) that every person simultaneously asked for a repeat.

I have an incredible appreciation for groups like this that are cleverly constructed explosive memes. There is much there to draw people from all segments of society. The use of repetition, common to all religions, helps enforce their ideals. The causal association of positive feelings with class work creates a strong desire for return. And the direct, structured approach of communication and learning assists the meme in reproduction fidelity.

The class was full of people whose lives had been drastically and positively altered. But my primary gripe in our experience was the hard-sell given by one of the grunts in the organization on our way out the door. As pushy as a time share salesman and as ebullient as an aerobics instructor, he clumsily plowed through his material to get us to return. He milked three “no’s” out of Ruth before I had to step in and give the one ‘no’ (and only one needed) from me.

Other random observations:

• Were they all colluding against us? At times it seemed like the entire class was dancing to some hidden beat mean to entice Ruth and I to join the club.
• The need to generate new recruits and sell the advanced classes infected virtually everything the senior people did. Those tales were veiled with the guise of human betterment heroic altruism. The saturation of this material had even bled through to the coworker that asked me to attend this when she described the devoted, selfless nature of the Landmark instructors.
• There were no negatives used. No matter how stupid of an idea one would state (and, believe me, Ruth pushed it) the class leaders would reply with, “Yeah, that’s great! Have you also thought of…” and then correct the statement.
• There seemed to be common gesticulation used by the most smooth. Whether these moves were directly taught or innocently absorbed through constant interaction, I have no idea.