I Am God
This article is excerpted from Life Inc., recently released by Random House.
While you might expect the marriage of progressive sociopolitical goals and the culture of spirituality to ground activism in ethics, it turns out that just the opposite is true. That’s because what we think of as “spirituality” today is not at all a departure from the narcissistic culture of consumption, but its truest expression. Consumer materialism and spirituality coevolved as ongoing reactions against the seemingly repressive institutions of both state and church.
The Puritans brought the late-Renaissance ideology of boundless frontiers with them to the new continent as Calvinism. While we associate the Puritan ethic with hard work, proper investment, and devotion to charity, all this insurance for one’s soul also promised a totally earthly gratification. Their ascetic renunciation was supposed to yield Puritans a material bounty, and their human prosperity in this world was likewise a sign of their spirit’s salvation in the next one. Not surprisingly, then, the brand of Protestantism that developed in America as corporations took hold in the mid- 1800s was already consonant with capitalism’s requirements for infinite growth and exploitation of material bounty.
John D. Rockefeller saw his monopolies as endowments from the Creator: “I believe the power to make money is a gift from God . . . to be developed to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.” Rockefeller treated his double- entry accounting ledgers as “sacred books that guided decisions and saved one from fallible emotions.”
The department-store magnate John Wanamaker saw in American Protestantism an emphasis on how people behaved rather than what they believed. He saw no contradiction, but a complete synergy between the sacred and the worldly --between devotion and consumption. Wanamaker expanded the Bethany Mission Sunday School, funding concerts, classes, and decorations -- much the same kinds of innovations he brought to his department stores. He invited an evangelist preacher, Dwight Moody, to hold a revival meeting “tailored more than any that preceded it to the needs of business and professional people who wanted to be freed from the guilt of doing what they were doing.” Religion became a way to support capitalism and purge reflection. The poor should not be helped in any case, lest their immorality be rewarded. Books like Charles Wagner’s The Simple Life criticized the social programs we now associate with churches, because they involve the redistribution of wealth, which was a repudiation of the way God had given it all out. Instead, everyone should just avoid “pessimism” and “analysis,” and be “confident” and “hopeful.”
Developing parallel to all this were the first stirrings of what we could call the American spiritual movement, or “mind cure,” to which Wanamaker’s window dresser, L. Frank Baum, belonged. In the 1893 Parliament of Religions at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the great mind- cure healers were all brought together for the first time. These were the original practitioners of what we could call the “new age,” bringing together the values of consumerism with that of spiritual healing. Baum’s own guru, the theosophist Helene Blavatsky, was there, right alongside Mary Baker Eddy (the founder of Christian Science) and Swami Vivekananda (the founder of the Vedanta Society). These spiritualists engaged in pretty esoteric practices. The Russian Blavatsky claimed that she could levitate, project herself out of her body, and produce physical objects out of thin air. Mary Baker Eddy healed ailing farm animals as a child, and later taught people how to heal one another through exposure to Christ Truth. Vivekananda introduced yoga to the West, by pairing it with his particularly American- friendly notion that “Jiva is Shiva” -- the individual is divine. By completely removing the traditional and institutional undertones from spirituality, they allowed their followers to embrace the here, the now, and, most important, the self as never before, democratizing happiness and, not coincidentally, condoning consumption as a form of making oneself whole.
The new cult of personal happiness through bootstrapping found its way into every arena, most famously into children’s literature, where it could take on mythic significance for successive generations. Eleanor Porter’s Pollyanna, one of John Wanamaker’s favorite tomes and a testament of the simple- life philosophy, tells the story of a young orphan who sees gladness everywhere. Regardless of any hardship imaginable, the girl experiences happiness and soon infects others with her irrepressible sense of joy. See it, feel it, be it. The universe will follow. In L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, we get theosophy through the lens of a window trimmer. He Americanizes the fairy tale, softening violence and misfortune with color and abundance. The Wizard in the Emerald City can provide anything to anyone, and especially to pure- hearted Dorothy as long as she believes. It is mind cure at its best: carpe diem. And it quickly became a foundation myth for the new spirituality of self.
Despite its antiauthoritarian and self-affirming style, the mind-cure movement didn’t offer a genuine alternative to American Protestantism, or a break from its manufactured individualism. Both movements focused on the salvation of the self -- one through grace, the other through positive thinking. Throughout the twentieth century, personal freedom would become the rallying cry of one counterculture or another, only serving to reinforce the very same individualism being promoted by central authorities and their propagandists. We were either individuals in thrall of the masquerade, or individuals in defiance of it. Corporatism was the end result in either case.
The mind-cure movements of Blavatsky and Eddy launched a self-as-source spirituality that dovetailed ever so neatly with the individualism promoted by corporate marketers and their psychology departments. Freud and his daughter Anna had led corporate psychologists to believe they could tame the irrational secret self by giving people symbols of power in the form of private houses, personal territory, and consumer goods. Another school of psychologists, taking their cue from Freud’s former student Wilhelm Reich, took the opposite approach -- or so they thought. Reich believed that the irrational inner self wasn’t dangerous unless it was repressed, and that the Freuds’ techniques did just this. These innermost impulses weren’t violent; they were sexual. They should be liberated, according to Reich, ideally through orgasm.
Anna Freud -- herself a virgin who had been analyzed by her father for practicing excessive masturbation -- was committed to her father’s legacy, and determined to take Reich down. She discredited his work and got him kicked out of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He was later treated as a madman and imprisoned. The court ordered that all his books and records be burned. The battle lines in the psych wars were drawn -- but both sides were ultimately fighting for the same thing.
By the 1960s, the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse had revived much of the spirit of Reich -- this time for an audience already dissatisfied with the spiritual vacuum offered by consumerism. He was the most vocal member of the Frankfurt School, and spoke frequently at student and antiwar protests. Marcuse blamed the Freudians -- as well as the government and corporate authorities who used their stultifying techniques -- for creating a world in which people were reduced to expressing their feelings and identities through mass- produced objects. He said the individual had been turned into a “one- dimensional man” -- conformist and repressed.
Marcuse became a hero to the real counterculture movement, and his words inspired the Weathermen, Vietnam War protests, and the Black Panthers. They saw consumerism as more than a way for corporations to make money; it was also a way to keep the masses docile while the government pursued an illegal war in Southeast Asia. So breaking free of the consumption- defined self was a prerequisite to becoming a conscious protester. As Linda Evans of the Weathermen explained, “We want to live a life that isn’t based on materialistic values, and yet the whole system of government and the economy of America is based on profit, on personal greed, and selfishness.” But as Stew Albert, a cofounder of the anti- Vietnam movement the Yippies, contended, the police state began in an individual person’s mind. People who sought to be engaged in political activism needed first to make themselves new and better people.
The counterculture and its psychologists again revived the spirit of Wilhelm Reich in the hopes of freeing people from the control of their own minds. To this end, in 1962 the Esalen Institute was founded on 127 acres of California coastline. The Institute hosted a wide range of workshops and lectures in an atmosphere of massage, hot tubs, and high- quality sex and drugs, all in the name of freeing people from repression. The Human Potential Movement -- Renaissance individualistic humanism updated for the twentieth century --began in an explosion of new therapies. Fritz Perls taught people how to kick and scream while George Leonard conducted “encounter sessions” between black and white radicals, and another with nuns from the Immaculate Heart Convent in Los Angeles -- a majority of whom discovered their sexuality and quit the order immediately afterward.
Underlying all of this therapy and liberation was a single premise: Esalen hero Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs.” The Brooklyn-born psychologist’s map for the individual’s journey to more liberated states of being held that people needed to fulfill their lower needs for food, shelter, and sex before they could work on higher ones such as self- esteem and confidence. At the very top of Maslow’s pyramidal chart sits the ultimate human state: “self- actualization.” For Maslow and his followers, the goal of the self- actualizer was autonomy, independent of culture, environment, or extrinsic satisfactions. Agency, personal creativity, and self- expression defined the actualized “self.”
Like Dorothy embarking down the yellow- brick road to self-fulfillment, thousands flocked to the hot tubs of Esalen to find themselves and self-actualize. Instead of annihilating the illusion of a self, as Buddha suggested, the self-centered spirituality of Esalen led to a celebration of self as the source of all experience. Change the way you see the world, and the world changes. Kind of. Instead of fueling people to do something about the world, as the Weathermen and Yippies had hoped, spirituality became a way of changing one’s own perspective, one’s own experience, and one’s own self. By pushing through to the other side of personal liberation, the descendants of Reich once again found self- adjustment the surest path to happiness. Anna Freud would have been proud. You are the problem, after all.
The self- improvement craze had begun. Instead of changing the world, people would learn to change themselves. Taking this as their central operating premise, the students of Fritz Perls, Aldous Huxley, and the other Esalen elders developed increasingly codified and process- driven methods of achieving self-actualization. David Bandler introduced the Esalen crowd to what he called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. Part hypnosis, part behavioral therapy, NLP sees the human organism as a set of learned neural patterns and experiences. By reframing one’s core beliefs, a person can relearn reality. The NLP practitioner is a kind of hypnotist who can help reprogram his patients by changing their “anchors,” “associations,” and “body language.”
This work trickled down both directly and indirectly to Werner Erhard and Tony Robbins, who democratized these self- actualization technologies even further through their workshops for EST (now the Landmark Forum) and Unleash the Power Within. Erhard based his seminars on an insight he had gained as a used-car salesman: people weren’t buying cars from him at all -- they were buying something else that they were simply projecting onto the car. When he was doing his sales job properly, he was just selling people back to themselves. So why not do this without the cars at all?
“The purpose of the EST training,” we were told when I took it as a college student in the early ’80s, “is to transform your ability to experience living so that the situations you have been trying to change or have been putting up with clear up just in the process of life itself.” Get it? The point is not to work on the outward circumstances, but on the inner obstacles to experiencing life in a fundamentally different way. Even if the insight had some value for certain people, the benefits of the EST experience were soon outweighed by the tremendous obligation to “enlist” others in the program. Instructors insisted that the only way to “get it” was to bring others into the pyramid. And if one did “get it,” why wouldn’t one want to share it with friends and family?
Tony Robbins’s Unleash the Power Within seminars explicitly married self-improvement with wealth and power. By walking across hot coals, his seminar participants were supposedly demonstrating to themselves the power of mind over matter and, presumably, over money and other people. While the initial focus of this commercial form of NLP may be on self-hypnosis, one only needs as much of that as is necessary to justify the hypnosis of others. That’s why the focus of most NLP today is on applying it to sales, advertising, and even influencing jury selection and deliberation.
While the Yippies and Vietnam protesters were becoming self-actualized NLP programmers, Madison Avenue was retooling its campaigns to these new, highly independent consumers. Daniel Yankelovich, a leading market researcher, studied the apparently nonconformist people of the 1960s and 1970s, and realized that they weren’t anticonsumerist at all. They simply wanted products that expressed their individuality, their self- direction, their self-actualization. Luckily for American industry, mass production had developed to the point where Detroit could turn out a brand of car for every member of the family, in any number of psychedelics-influenced colors. The Stanford Research Institute hired Abraham Maslow to turn his hierarchy of needs into psychographic categories of American consumers, applicable to marketing.
It’s not that the self-help movement sold out. It was sold out to begin with. First imported from the East by mind-cure fans like L. Frank Baum to help rationalize the marketing of illusion as an ethical pursuit, the “religion of no-religion” was nothing more than a change in perspective. A new set of self- as- source glasses through which to see: Pollyanna’s.
Making money off the new spirituality is not a corruption of this movement’s core truths, but their realization. In that sense, the obligation of Landmark graduates to enlist their friends in multi-thousand-dollar courses really does confirm the teachings of Werner Erhard. In their logic, the refusal to do so indicates a weakness, an inability to master the energy of money, or a difficulty communicating with one’s friends from a place of power. The woman taking Km tonic or wearing magnetic jewelry passes it on to others more as a way of confirming her own belief in its efficacy than to help her friends. But it’s a win-win, because the friends will be helped, too. A win-win-win, in fact, because she’ll get to keep some of the profit as she passes the proceeds up to her supplier.
Every new self-help modality is an opportunity for a new pyramid of wealth-building as it is shared with successive groups of beneficiaries. The patient of a healer first pays to be healed, then pays even more to learn the technique and heal others. Finally, if he’s lucky, he can move to the top of the pyramid and charge still others to be healed themselves. Like residents at a teaching hospital, New Age practitioners “watch one, do one, teach one.” And at each successive place in the hierarchy, the practitioner has invested more time and money. No one who takes enough courses to become a certified reader of auras will be caught dead saying they don’t really exist. Besides, seeing is believing.
Getting past any guilt, shame, or ethics, today’s self-help practitioners no longer consider profit to be a happy side effect of their work, but its raison d’être. The Courage to Be Rich: Creating a Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance, by the TV wealth advisor and bestselling author Suze Orman, ties psychology, spirituality, and finances together into a single, one-size-fits-all approach to the universe that hinges on our relationship to cash. Esalen, the Omega Institute, and other spiritual retreat centers fill their catalogs with workshops by Malcolm Gladwell on “Being Fearless,” Jack Canfield on “Success Principles,” and, of course, everyone on The Secret.
Organized religion well understands the new competitive landscape, and offers its congregations just as much personal success as any self-improvement huckster. The televangelist Creflo Dollar (that’s his real name) blings the word to his followers: “Jesus is ready to put some money in your pocket. . . . You are not whole until you get your money. Amen.” Dollar may be the epitome of the “prosperity gospel,” which promotes the “total” enrichment of its followers. Megachurches are megacorporations, whose functioning and rhetoric both foster the culture and politics of the free market. Christian branding turns a religion based in charity and community into a personal relationship with Jesus -- a narcissistic faith mirroring the marketing framework on which it is now based. Megastar and multimillionaire televangelist Joel Osteen, “the smiling preacher,” prays for raises and bonuses for members of his congregation, and promises that people will find material success through faith. And keep finding it as long as they believe they will.
For it’s no longer good enough to make a lot of money. In a society of ever-improving selves, the individual must become a moneymaking entity all its own. As Chicken Soup pusher Canfield says, “The desire for increase is the fundamental. Expansion is the true nature of the universe. More. The soul is attempting to express itself in a higher way.” One can’t simply earn “enough” and then stop. Like the economy and the universe, a person’s wealth must grow. It’s only natural.
- 6-2-09
- Douglas Rushkoff's blog
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well said
Yes and no
I totally agree with the thrust of this critique--what masquerades as spirituality, both in religion and personal development, is actually it's opposite (illusion/grasping/suffering). Overall, a very intriguing critique. I look forward to reading and contemplating your book.
I think it is also important to emphasize that true spirituality still exists (and always has and always will), and that there are glimpses of this true spirituality even within the corrupted teachings of personal development and self-help. If we throw out the baby, we are left with empty meaninglessness and no solution to the problem (perhaps you cover solutions later in your book--I'd love to hear some).
NLP for example, while it has been popularized by the charismatic characters Tony Robbins and Richard Bandler (there is no David Bander, by the way) has lesser known advocates that do not value worldly success, fame, and wealth (see Steve and Connirae Andreas, Robert Dilts, Stephen Gilligan, David Gordon, Leslie Lebeau, etc.) It is widely thought that NLP and hypnosis are about control, either of the self or others. But when you truly understand that the separate self sense is illusory (or if you care about people), there is nobody to control or dominate. The natural approach then becomes gently and lovingly guiding towards wholeness. This is not how most people think of hypnosis or NLP though, so again, your critique is certainly accurate when considering popular approaches.
There are many legit spiritual teachers in my opinion, and many do not seek to create massive empires of wealth. On the other hand, you won't find any appearing on Oprah or starring in The Secret. But we as television watchers are complicit in this phenomenon too.
Of course, if we are going to critique the mind-cure approach, psychoanalysis, and Reich, we must also attack cognitive behavioral therapy and psychiatry too. Cultural problems cannot be solved by individual psychological approaches alone. But yet some individual psychological approaches are helpful, and some are better than others. I personally think the psychiatry-pharmacology complex should be critiqued with much more emphasis than the insightful genius of Freud or Reich, who also had opinions on culture and politics.
Agency, personal creativity, and self-expression defined the actualized “self.” I do not see any necessary link between individuals seeking personal creativity and self-expression and rampant consumerism. I see consumerism as an attempt at self-expression and personal creativity that fails to truly express or create--perhaps that's what you also were pointing to. I see an opportunity for emphasizing collective relations that could allow for personal creativity, agency, and self-expression. Political action can be enormously creative and enjoyable.
I also don't think that the illusory separate self sense can be pinned on Maslow--it seems to me like this persistent human illusion goes back at least as far as human civilization, if not to the first tribe sitting around a fire (us vs. the darkness). Charles Eisenstein (also a RS writer) argues that it goes back to the first cell wall, the very beginnings of separation.
But back to praising your writing. (I only add my thoughts because I like yours so much!) It’s not that the self-help movement sold out. It was sold out to begin with. This is totally true. The fundamental premises of self-help and personal development include massive personal wealth as an end-in-itself, a fundamental error that dramatically increases human suffering and alienation. I am hopeful that an optimistic understanding of human development is still possible, but I do think such a vision will be collective, not merely individual and autonomous.
Canfield and other personal development gurus understand half of the universe, but ignore the other half. The universe is expanding, but also winding down (2nd law of thermodynamics--funny how new agers like Quantum Physics but not entropy). Self-help is all Jupiter and no Saturn, all expansion and no contraction, all birth and no death. But let's not over-focus on Saturn, contraction, and death lest we become sour social critics. What is the synthesis, the integration of opposites that is wanting to be born of the thesis and the critique?
http://twitter.com/duffmcduffee
Yes and no revisited
Just because the new age strip-mined the esoteric traditions and took bits and pieces of them and turned them into marketable commodities for third-rate minds doesnt invalidate the fact that a lot of real spirituality manifested apart from all the bullshit.
You who wrote about memes and meme-shells should know that: the bullshit is the outer exoteric wrapping. And I remember how you wrote about how you gen-xers, adding mastery of digital tech and linking it with the psychedelic vision, were going to succeed where the 60's generation failed and I thought as I read you, "youll see."
The 60's were in fact a Planetary Spiritual Renaissance Wave, but unfortunately, the elite's control - and the Matrixed-millions of americans - easily starved it out and destroyed it. The problem has always been that counter-cultures cannot flourish without means to support itself, but how does one earn a living without being part of the Imperial death-machine (as Henry Miller essentially wrote in 1939)?
We face the same problem now: all the wealth needed to make the present Transition to a new worldview and way of life is held by elites who dont give a damn about the people. It is not quite as simple as you present it. Yes I Am God, but that "I" is not the ego.
I'd like to hear the sequel
That is, not so much about how life become a corporation, but about how to take it back. I very much hope you'll have some better answers than the hucksters whose product lines you're dishing.
I greatly enjoyed the well-merited bashing of EST, Tony Robbins, and Suze Orman (whom I particularly loathe). I was hoping you'd also go after Louise Hay and Deepak Chopra.
However in the end I have to agree with JosephKitaj, who states the case succinctly, especially in his third paragraph. The question posed by Henry Miller has been the central question of my life, to which I have never yet found an adequate or satisfying answer.
how does one earn a living?
don't know, but I would think it might be possible to do, if one were to put belief first, as a necessary condition, before employment and financial security...define your reality, instead of letting it define you... easier said than done?... not necessarily... guess it just has to be done... Miller just wanted to write... so he did, and he spent most of his life living on handouts... but he got his priorities straight and enjoyed his life all the more for not compromising...
that is the power we have over the machine... otherwise I refer you to Camus': Myth of Sysiphus.
uncle rudy
uncle rudy's very big tent
Autonomous Individuality is Illusion
Thanks for a very interesting article Douglas. I find it funny how accurate the stereotype of the "New Ager" is in calling the individual body/mind/ego "God". This is a fairly accurate stereotype, no?
You seem to have pretty seamlessly connected together the individualism of the New Age/counterculture with the individualism of mainstream consumer culture. Nice work!
I detected a heavy influence from Adam Curtis' indispensible, 4-hour documentary, "Century of Self." I wish more people would take the time to view this beautifully produced tool for radical self-deprogramming. Its available for free on the web. In my humble opinion it is one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century that the anti-establishment movements of the 1950's and 60's were appropriated by the forces of the establishment. It appears that you've boiled down the cause of the movement's perversion to the radical individualism that is ubiquitious throughout modern western culture.
Autonomous individuality is an illusion, based upon the idea of separation. True, holistic individuality is made possible only by the interconnection and interdependence of the "individual" and its "environment." Real individuality is the relation between these two "opposing" poles. Only when we engage with that which is "other," do we really become "ourselves" as "individuals". We are individuals, yet we are not at all. There is a self and yet, there is no self. Only through bridging this paradox will we be able to go forward. We must find a new path (or perhaps return to an old one) which stands firmly within the paradox of self/no-self. This is the challenge, no? Whatever the answer is, it lies within engagement between "self" and "other," and not in solipsistic self-actualization.
Strengthening the individual self towards illusory autonomy will only serve to further atomize and isolate us, which in turn continuously provides the establishment with power over us. Only collectively will we possess the strength to transform the world. Solidarity should be one of our most critical goals during this time. The illusion of autonomous "selfhood" will be dispelled when the society and culture that is interwoven with this view of "self" strikes its ontological limit of sustainability.
Our individual self is not God (its just an infitesimal portion), and soon God (in the form of reality) will tear down the ego of all who make themselves a false idol.
"Sanity is Madness put to good use. Waking life is a dream controlled." -George Santayana
gobbledygook
there is no paradox between 'self' and 'no-self'... self actualization goes beyond solipsism to a place where there is no duality... no self, no no-self and no bridge...
I don't know where you got the silly idea that the "New Ager" is calling "the individual body/mind/ego "God"" when the whole discussion seems to be about transcendence...
looks a lot like shadow boxing to me...
uncle rudy
uncle rudy's very big tent
Nah
Another cynic sweeps all of spirituality, self-help and self-improvement down the drain together. Certainly could have been done in fewer words.
As others have said, all three of those categories have a lot to offer a discerning, open-minded person. Like anything else, there is wheat and chaff.
Reminds me of when somebody says music is terrible these days just because Nickelback and Daughtry are so terrible.
Dig deeper.
www.raptitude.com -- The gentle art of sanity amidst civilization
Agreed, but...
I think the point he is trying to make is that much of what we percieve to be "the meaning of life" is geared (or co-opted) to serve the purposes of individual profit. Which is probably fair.
I enjoy Douglas Rushkoff and look forward to picking up his book, to see what his solution is.
social justice
always great work coming from ya, douglas. awesome article. a neat history lesson. the book seems to a must-read.
the premise makes me think of the implications of "The Secret" and the Oprah-izing of spirituality, where it's all about money and consumption, and the feel-good, law of attraction ideology that really seems to ignore socio political hegemony and oppression.
not that the spiritual principles aren't true, and useful, and necessary (the endless materialist critique of marxists, for example, leads to a very sad life)...but that spiritual principles need to be coupled with a longing for social justice and equality, and actions to achieve this in order to evolve the human race.
wanderlust
Still some truths
In general we are starting to understand how thoughts & beliefs effect our experience. This idea is not new but we're learning to do it consciously. The principles underlying the various versions of this idea are the same.
Ultimately its up to you to manifest YOUR values----which might in fact include such evolutionary concepts as: co-operation over competition, people over things, forgiveness over condemnation, the greatest depth for the greatest breadth etc.
You'll sell more books if you're promising wealth, but the idea that we create our own experience is not inherently materialistic. The books of Gary Renard and ACIM are about pure forgiveness and a kind if transcendence of the world while still living there ("its all an illusion") This is consistent with the core truths of Vedanta and Buddhism IMHO.
Fixing social issues certainly needs a shift in thoughts and deeds and we can see how the old, obsolete models are not working and starting to die----too bad that the old powers are doing all they can to insist we just need to fix the unfixable. Let the towers fall---we just need our smartphones and a way to send monetary "credits" to each other without the money-grabbing middle-man.
Werner and est
Werner Erhard did not go on the lecture circuit or write self-help books (not that there's anything wrong with that). He set up trainings in which he was able to reach over a half a million people and help them turn their life around. I suppose you think that he should have done this for free but the cost of renting hotel rooms that held 200 or more people every weekend all over the world would seem to preclude that.
You are wrong in implying that either the est training or The Landmark Forum cost thousands of dollars. When I did est in the 70s the cost was $250. This was for two weekends that enabled me to turn my life around. The cost for The Landmark Forum is now $450. If you think these are examples of the consumer mentality, you are way off base. No one felt any "obligation" to enroll others. It was simply obvious that if you had a valuable experience you would want to share it the people that are closest to you.
Like many other things in life, the transformation I experienced became more real when I was able to share it with my family and friends. You say that there may have been "certain people" who found it valuable. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In independent surveys that were repeated over the course of several years, well over 95% of the people who completed the training found it of enormous value in their life.
You can go on and on putting down things that have enhanced the quality of life and ascribe it to consumerism or whatever, but you cannot take away the value that people received. If you are under the impression that graduates of the training are more self centered, you simply do not know what you are talking about. In my experience, those who completed the training are more, not less active in social and political movements. That goes for myself and all the other Graduates I know.
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Definite value, but also pushy with the sales
You are certainly correct that the introductory Landmark Forum costs $450, not thousands of dollars. And I'd also agree that many people I know say that they have benefitted enormously from Landmark, Est, Tony Robbins UPW, etc. I'm not up for throwing out baby with bathwater.
However, I'd also say that it is nearly universal amongst everyone I know who's attended Landmark Education events in particular that both the initial pitch was experienced as highly pushy and manipulative, and that the encouragement to "enroll" others through strongarm tactics was very strong. Those who don't share this critical opinion tend to have a strong opinion in the opposite direction, that Landmark is perfect in every way and those that are critical either have a bad attitude or are unwilling to take 100% responsibility for their lives (ignoring the responsibility that Landmark Education has to their customers). This is what one would expect from someone experiencing cognitive dissonance and therefore needing to defend the group or otherwise admit being suckered.
I have had several friends who challenged this strong emphasis on enrolling friends and family with very severe "feedback" given from the facilitators. One of my friends who benefitted from ongoing training with Landmark came home after every communications class to read a chapter or two from Cults in Our Midst to deprogram himself--so that he could receive the benefits as well as keep his individuality intact. This seems common amongst those I know.
Tony Robbins has a 3 hour-long sales pitch for his $18,000 advanced seminar series (Mastery University) at the emotional climax of his Unleash the Power Within seminar. He uses extreme sales pressure to sell this course, dividing up the group into those who are planning on giving a deposit now and those who aren't, and then having the in-group mock the out-group to increase compliance. He fires off every anchor he's set all weekend to create massive groupthink, and even encourages people to write post-dated checks if they don't have the money, because somehow believing they will get the money they will. I've always been curious how many people get "buyer's remorse" after that particular pitch.
http://twitter.com/duffmcduffee
Pressure
Duff, having led many introductory sessions, I can see where some people feel pressure but you have to ask yourself where the source of the pressure comes from. In my experience, much of the pressure that people feel is the internal pressure they feel as they fear change and are torn between wanting to maintain what is safe and comfortable in their lives and their knowledge that parts of their life may not be working as best as they could
This internal pressure is often projected onto the seminar leader who is simply sharing the benefits they received from doing est or Landmark. Perhaps in some cases the seminar leader may be aggressive in their enthusiasm but it only comes from their personal experience about how valuable the training is, not because they are in line for a toaster. I do not know what "strongarm" tactics you are referring to. est was not coming from survival when leaders encouraged participants to share the training with those they were close to.
They were coming from a ground of being that transformation only becomes real when you can take it out into the world and share your experience. It comes from wanting a world that works for everyone not from stuffing the coffers of its treasury. I do not think nor have I ever felt that Werner, est, or Landmark were perfect. My own relationship with Werner lasted seven years.
During this time I had the opportunity to observe the workings of the organization from the inside including seeing Werner operate on many different levels. The relationship was not always comfortable. He is a man who is dedicated to making others great and can be very challenging to be around. I did not always appreciate what he was trying to do at the time but in retrospect my admiration for this man is boundless. This is not hero worship. He is not my guru. I simply respect him as deeply as one human being can love and respect another for the contribution he has made to my life, the lives of my family, and the world at large.
Every belief system has a shadow...
I am a big proponent of Landmark education. In fact I had a full blown mystical experience during my first weekend course. It blew me away because it was the same kind experience I had doing sweat lodges, vision quests in the wilderness, and rebirthing work, BUT it was in a classroom setting . All that was happening was a discussion on the nature of the mind when i had my experience.. Hence I do know the power of this work.
But there is the shadow of (so to speak) that has dogged the conversation around Landmark when I did the work and seams like it is still there today. But that is ok, because every system has a blind spot, even Landmark. But the work is superb. I always say to those who are interested in Landmark go to special evenings introductions that are led my actual Fourm leaders. These people are highly trained and you might at well get the info from the Masters.
I am rather disappointed by this article, but as I said every system of thought has a blind spot/shadow. Then again I would not go to a plumber to fix my fuses and I will not be asking Mr Rushkoff spiritual advice.
buying heaven
The history of modern spirituality has been a process – a neutral process.
Spirituality always finds its way to value and to the material – otherwise it would remain unconscious, unknown, immaterial. It does not always find money, but always does find wealth, spiritual wealth.
Led Zeppelin said it well: And as we wind on down the road / Our shadows taller than our soul. / There walks a lady we all know / Who shines white light and wants to show / How everything still turns to gold. / And if you listen very hard / The tune will come to you at last. / When all are one and one is all / To be a rock and not to roll. / And she's buying a stairway to heaven.
Once women are financially empowered – globally - balance and consciousness will dissolve the corporation. The global financial empowerment of women will synchronistically occur with the flowering of divine consciousness in humankind.
www.amygeorge.net
right on!i just read your
right on!
i just read your life story, and i think you're fab!
Questioning the Theory
I question the idea that when women are financially empowered globally, that the corporation will be dissolved.
First, to me, symbolically speaking, the corporation (literally, the body) is a feminine form. They make a safe and comfortable home from the harsh elements outside, "grow" their employees, and so on. Women just love for their men to be in corporations (oft-times literally,) while men dream of leaving them.
Second, as far as I can tell, women already are in charge of the spending. Men may earn more, but it makes no difference, because women spend more. Advertisers know this, and the people who lay out the malls know this as well. A world of women's spending, (the world we live in,) is plausibly a world of comfort and consumerism. "Shopping for heaven."
Now, I may be wrong, but your point seems worth questioning to me.
Landmarketing
In my experience Landmark turns people into human spambots. It uses textbook brainwashing techniques (sleep deprivation, long hours with limited meals, and suggestive jargon) to convince people they have undergone some great change. They do this soley to make someone feel so good that they want to sign up their friends, so they can sign up their friends, etc.
Whenever I have asked a Landmark or EST person to tell me how the system has changed them for the better they are very vague, or they start spewing Landmark jargon that does not translate into English. When they can give examples they seem like self-centered navel contemplation. They sometimes say, "it has helped millions of people from different backgrouds etc." Great, what have these people done for society with their enlightenment? Don't try to bring up Werner Erhard's awards for charity from bogus institutions either.
Although a book by an EST graduate who has written nothing else claims they recanted, Erhard's family went on 60 minutes claiming both sexual and physical abuse. I trust 60 minutes over the word of a Erhard apologist. But let's pretend she is correct. What does that say about Erhard that he would raise children that would say these things about him on national TV? Someone with such toxic relationships is not someone I would look towards for spiritual advice. Would you claim your father raped you on national TV?
I like that Doug brought up Landmark in the context of the culture of self, because I think whatever benefits landmark has function merely to massage the ego.
Stay away from Landmark. They will hijack your brain to make you sell their seminar. If you really swallow the kool-aid you will even volunteer for them. It attracts people looking for a father figure guru, but as I stated above he did not seem like the best father.
Great article Doug. I have been listening to your radio show archives the past few days and I look forward to reading your new book when I have some time, my "to-read" stack is tall.
Dougs Radio Show
http://rushkoff.com/videoaudio/mediasquat/
Life Inc. Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOBWhVe68os
Naja Raja - You obviously
Naja Raja - You obviously have not taken est or Landmark because if you had you would not be repeating such ideologically-based untruths. The fact that in the course of 32 years of est and Landmark, only a miniscule percentage of over one million people who have done the trainings have had anything negative to say is remarkable.
This is from a group active in eleven countries around the world and in prisons and schools. People who did benefit from the trainings constituted folks from all socio-economic groups and all walks of life including prominent people in the academic and professional worlds of science and the arts. These people had just as much initial resistance as everyone else and did not become enthusiastic until after they had seen the results in their life.
Landmark of the Beast
I mean how do you really respond to the fact that from the outside it looks like a self perpetuating marketing virus. You need to give me something more than the old, if you tried it you would know. I understand a lot of things are experiences you just need to try to understand, but most of the descriptions of these things sound appealing enough to make me want to try. All the data I have on Landmark makes me want to stay away.
Landmark/EST is not something you learn. It is something you buy into. Can you teach me what you get from Landmark for free, or is trademarked?
I really apologize for the contempt I am projecting. I don't really mean it towards you. I just really detest Landmark. I think it is a crime against humanity that someone can jack into the brains of intelligent people to turn them into marketing tools. Makes walking around with logos all over your clothing look like nothing.
Your ideas are honest but misguided
Raja -I cannot enroll you in The Landmark Forum and do not wish to try. If I said that the est training and The Landmark Forum were the two most valuable things I have done in my life, you wouldn't believe me anyway. I would suggest that you have a warped view of what these courses are (or were as the case may be).
They are nothing like you think or have heard that they are. In every training, people are given the choice to leave on the second day with a full refund. In all the trainings I've participated in (over 10), at the most only two or three people out of 100-200 people ever leave and some of them return.
These trainings have been conceived by a brilliant and compassionate individual who has brought the ideas of transformation, personal responsibility, and possibility to a world that has forgotten what life truly can be about. Your belligerence is honest but it is based on nothing but hearsay or some misguided ideas about the way that you think it is. If you do choose to take the Forum you will see for yourself.
States and Stages
Great job of describing this particular matrix. Some can connect-the-dots better than others, and in the above description you did a great job, Douglas!
I found it interesting, in the usual RS sense, that so many comments following your article were happy to pick through your dots, and the lines you drew between them; erasing, or retracing a line here; erasing, and replacing a dot there. Why, I wonder, doesn’t someone just admit that this state of consciousness that you so well elaborated upon, Douglas, is obsolete and close to being transcended and absorbed just like all states of consciousness that have evolved in our past? Is it because those still stuck within its circle need to more fully recognize the landscape before they can make the transition from this state to the next? Do articles like this one provide a window through which one can see, but not really smell, the next state? Or is it because we all need to feel in agreement with the zeitgeist that holds us here so firmly in this obsolete state in order for us to cope with it as individuals? “The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes” –Marcel Proust
“What window? I don’t see no damn window!”
I walked across Tony Robbins red-hot-coals, and went back the following year as a volunteer to validate what I’d witnessed as a participant. The fact of his genius is lost both to the doubter/critics, and to his addicted followers. Tony is simply someone who is exploiting for his own personal gain, and for the benefit of others, the next level of consciousness he has personally apprehended. Those of us on his level (or above) may learn a thing-or-two about the particular stage he has uncovered, while recognizing both the exploitation and the benefit without judgment, and then we simply move on. Others moan and groan in the levels below because that is what lower-state consciousness does. That the next level already exists, and that some have already arrived there and are exploiting those who haven’t, is obvious to those of us sitting in the audience among other higher-state participants. (Only a higher-consciousness can understand another higher-consciousness, and the levels below it.)
So all of you RS’ers with the capacity to evolve… Douglas has herein provided a window through which you can glimpse the next state. Or, as taught in Dzogchen, here are your “pointing out instructions” So, move along now, and hurry up, won’t you?
The other day I watched a moving Youtube dramatization of one of our founding fathers, full of pithy one-liners, which expressed in an increasingly emotional rant, the valid frustration of many who can apprehend the evil in this broken government with all of its shameful waste and corruption. His solution? “Put a tea bag in an envelope and mail it to your congressman!” I laughed my ass off as I realized the tension between how immediately valid his argument is, and how utterly meaningless his solution is. How typically modern his awareness; that all a person in one state of consciousness can do is recommend a solution within another stage of the same state of consciousness. (States are vertical, stages are horizontal)
One of the enemies of the next evolved state of consciousness is the illusion people have that a slightly different horizontal stage is equivalent to the next evolved vertical state. It is NOT equivalent! As Stephen Hawking once said: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge”. I would add: The greatest enemy of the personal apprehension of enlightenment is not a lower state of consciousness. It is the apprehension of a different stage, which produces an illusion that you have arrived at a higher state. Maybe understanding the difference can make all the difference???
Where, I wonder does Douglas, the author of this new book, stand on this subject? Will HIS solution to the current religio/spiritual/commercial matrix suggest an incremental movement in another unique horizontal space within this state of consciousness, or will he recommend a leap to a higher state?
My bet would be that he’s stuck at this level along with the rest of you, if it weren't for his tag: I Am God
As expected
Howard- Perhaps instead of responding to my comments in the way I predicted you would, you should try and actually address the points I have raised. For example, I did not ask you to enroll me in Landmark. I asked if a Landmark grad could teach me what they had learned, or if it was trademarked or otherwise designed only to be taught within the confines of a weekend seminar.
I don't consider the French documentary on Landmark hearsay, or the 60 minutes piece on Erhard's family, or the fact that they have been kicked out of several countries as a cult, or the fact that they use standard brainwashing techniques.
Raja - There is no
Raja - There is no information that I "learned" from est/Landmark that can be passed along to you. The trainings are not about information. They are personal experiences in which you look at your own life and discover the truth for yourself about what works and what doesn't.
The Landmark Forum creates a safe environment for people to do this - without judgment or evaluation. The methods that are used are done for one purpose, because they work. The fact that in one weekend people can give up destructive behavior patterns that they have carried around all their life belies the fact that the methods are in any way "abusive".
Yes, occasionally it is pointed out that people walk around as if in a straitjacket and are being run by their "tape recorder" and that their behavior has become mechanical. It becomes clear very early, however, that the people who are unwilling to truly examine their behavior and their mechanical patterns cannot hope to confront and remove the obstacles that have prevented them from enjoying a full and satisfying life.
Semantics
Howard- Fine call it an experience. Could someone like yourself who has attended 10 forums give me the experience Landmark would give me?
I don't find Landmark as abusive as I find it deluded. For example, you talk about breaking mechanical patterns, but as I stated earlier you have responded with very predictable defenses of Landmark and seem to have a hard time breaking from them and engaging my questions directly. Oh well.
Raja, the short answer is no
Thanks
If nobody can give someone else an experience, how does Landmark give one the experience? This type of double think is exactly what I encounter whenever I scratch a Landmark grad.
Thank you for reaffirming my conviction that Landmark is something you buy into and not something you can learn outside of its carefully crafted business model.
Perhaps.....
There are stories/thoughts in our heads that we take for granted as the absolute truth because for many different reasons. These thoughts were consciously or unconsciously implanted or created by our own mind because of interpretations we created or were given to us from experiences.
Something happens and we create or was given a meaning to the experience. Example; we sit next to a attractive person and that person makes a sour face as we try to strike up a conversation. We might interpret it to mean that we are ugly,stupid or to fat/skinny/old young, whatever. The truth might be that the person has gas.
Landmark's training is about hearing those internal voices and then choosing to listen them or not. Some stories make us happy ,successful,more loving,and able to serve others. so we choose to stick with them. Ultimately it is about being still in the face of whatever and creating a action from that place.
Can one learn these concepts from other sources? I say yes because the nature of the mind a concern of many other practices, and spiritual disciplines. BUT I think that the beauty of landmark is that it is held in a modern environment and it takes some esoteric ideas and makes them accessible.
Landmark is what I call transparent in that is is a process that supplements other disciplines. It's teachings remind me of the wittings of Castaneda,Don Miguel Ruiz, and Lao tzu. I have spoken to a Rabbi who said it was like the Talmud. I spoke to a Buddhist Monk who it said it was the teachings of the Buddha in western terms.
I have not done a course at Landmark since 2000, but I have experienced greater health,more creativity,better sex and deeper love because of this work. I am a better person because of it. Many people in my life have recieved benifits from this work as well. It is not the be all or end all, and like any other practice it is a discipline that must be kept sharp to gain benefits. There is much more I could write , but I say if it strikes your fancy, cool. If not , cool. But to say it has no value to anyone...well that is just a story.
Be well
Ha Ha Ha Ha
Amazing isn't it?
Not even a DENT!!!
Like I said:
“What window? I don’t see no damn window!”
All Publicity is Good Publicity
The safest place to face your problems is within your own heart
... for those that are not able to find shelter there... there is only payment to others.
All things are for sale ... only to the degree there is lack
. As we leave Eden ... there is only "problems" ... and "solutions"
As we bite the apple ... only then does dis-satisfaction begins.
Completing my thought
It's always
It's al
Lol
Some evolution going on
I'f go a li
Stages and States - paradox - transcend and include
I was sad to see the discourse descend here. I wanted to hear more from Leon Night about states and stages. What he said it reminded me of spiral dynamics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um17Be8Cb8Y) and the Wilber-Combs lattice. As a former Landmark student (2 years) and School of Practical Philosophy (also 2 years), I stuck around long enough to get incredible benefits... and see the drawbacks. Sending teabags to your congressman isn't very useful. How do we change things?
To answer Henry Miller: "How does one earn a living without being part of the Imperial death-machine?" I am hoping timebanking is one answer (www.TimeInterchange.com) Perhaps a former (or current) Landmark teacher would come on the timebanking site, post an offer to teach (it is free). I can host it, and Naga and others can take a class without any pressure to pay for the hotel room or proselytize to spread the gospel. I mean if we on RS cannot come together, then what hope for the rest of humanity!
Even while I was annoyed at Landmark for continually asking me to bring guests (about 30% of the class time, each time) I saw the irony that I was only at Landmark cuz they pushed my friend to invite me, but then once inside, I wanted that pressure to market for them to stop! :-)
Money is a convenient motivator to drive these systems. Douglas's book, this website - all possible due to money. And fewer would have heard the ideas of Tolle, were it not for Oprah and the big publishing company behind him. That said, I'm trying to find the guru who wears a paper bag over his head for the book jacket photo - or works anonymously in the mail room. Someone having no ego attachment, or thoughts of the fat check I can give them, might be someone interesting to hear. I think TimeBanking - currency based on abundance rather than scarcity - is an answer.
Hopefully if this thread keeps going, we can talk about solutions and empowering each other. That's what I am hoping RS is about.
how_cults_think
Diane Benscoter talks about how she joined the Moonies -- and stayed for five long years. She shares an insider's perspective on cults and extremist movements, and proposes a new way to think about today's most troubling conflicts.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ex_moonie_diane_benscoter_how_cults_t...
Ideas and money
It's a li
I'll say more
I'll say more as the author of the orignal piece does.
Otherwise: MUTE.
---------
Douglas is such a talented writer
who sweeps away centuries of western indulgence leaving - well buy his book to find out. Yes, there is something corny, alienated, violent and greedy about so much modern life. Hell, I feel alienated sometimes. Did the blacksmith of simplier times not feel that? Maybe not - but he had sore teeth and a wife who died in childbirth instead. There is much to be delighted about being a 21st century dweller. Even one who pays interest. Jeebus and mushroom gobbling if Douglas is not a fairly well off and famous person, living in times sympathetic to his memes.
Awesome article
One of the most thought provoking articles ever posted on RS
Rushkoff to me is getting to some of the crucial questions at hand. We can't have a discussion of what an evolving world is going to look like without addressing capitalism, corporatism and consumerism. I see strains of Perfectionism and "New Edge Fundamentalism" in his article, but the overall theme is one that cannot be ignored. "Century of Self" as it reveals the work of Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays in creating modern consumerism is something that all RS readers should watch. I hope that these themes receive more attention on RS.
Comments on the comments...I especially enjoy Duff's thoughts about Jupiter and Saturn. The more I go along in my journey, the more I realize that the wisdom already within the cosmos brings great clarity to difficult questions. And I certainly don't want to wade too deeply into the Landmark controversy, but my experience with the Forum is somewhere between the two discussions. I benefited from the weekend and I am glad that I did it, but wouldn't recommend it for most people and did find the incessant sales pitching distracting.
I look forward to reading Rushkoff's book. This particular article was all polemic with little solution, but the title of his book does promise solutions and I look forward to hearing them. He does give me a bit of pause with the perfectionist tone. Monasticism is the only alternative if you carry some of his thoughts to their logical conclusion.