The Landmark Forum
The Bait - Common Landmark Claims

Let us examine common claims made by "The Forum" graduates:

1. "Everyone is satisfied"
The statistically overwhelming amount of satisfied customers, as pointed out by the Landmark people, seem to be an incentive to join in and try it out. However, I do not find it overwhelming in the least. One must not forget that the people who join in are the target market. I’ll give an example: 90% of normal headaches will pass thanks to a pill such as Aspirin. Does that imply that everyone should use Aspirin? Of course not, Aspirin serves as a cure for headaches. As such, it should be successful. Otherwise, it would have been a somewhat problematic cure. So, even if the person who tells you to join because everyone is satisfied, you should consider what your need is, and how good the solution. Apart from that, do consider two very important points:
a. That person is biased
b. That person relies mostly on hearsay. Dissatisfied customers drop out and keep things to themselves. The zealots do not.

2. "Well, actually, there were people who weren’t satisfied. But that’s just because they didn’t really want to get something from the Forum"
One of my absolute favorites: "It didn’t work because you didn’t want it to", blaming the customer instead of the product. May I suggest: "The headache didn’t pass, not because you took birth-control pills by mistake, but because you didn’t want it to go away!". Or how about "JFK died, not because he was shot, but because he didn’t want to live". This is called, ad-hoc reasoning. Because one’s theory fails ("Everyone is satisfied"), one assumes an unproven theory to explain the phenomenon ("Unless they don’t want to be satisfied").

3. "What have you got to lose beside money, and a little bit of time?"
Well, you usually do not hand out hundreds of dollars just because you have nothing to lose. And an intensive three day course, at least 12 hours each, amount to a straight 36 hours rush. That’s plus the 10 extra meetings, at least 4 hours each. That’s 76 hours! 10 minutes a day exercising, your health would benefit from it a lot and you won’t pay a nickel to do it, still, your can’t find the time to do it. What’s more, you might lose your mind. I’ll explain that later.

4. "You have to attend in order to know what’s it all about"
That’s nice. Applying to your sense of curiosity may present it like some sort of spiritual metaphysical experience. In fact, it is not. The only reason you won’t know exactly what’s going on inside, is because participants are instructed not to tell. Why is that? Because the magic might be lost altogether. But then again, if you would have wanted magic, David Copperfield is on TV Sunday night.

5. "Do you want to make a difference in life?", "Don’t you want to have breakthroughs?"
I didn’t put these two phrases accidentally. The terms ‘making a difference’ and ‘breakthrough’ are jargon used in the Forum. They do not mean the same thing to the layman. Stripped out of context, they seem bizarre. It’s like asking "don’t you want more money?". Well, sure, who doesn’t? Do you NEED more money? Is money shortage what’s keeping you dissatisfied with life? Not necessarily.

6."You’ll learn new things"
The name of the company is "Landmark Education". I’d like to pause here for a while in order to compare everyday education with education, the Landmark way. Just to clear things up a bit:

Education vs Landmark