OddThinking

Rather casually, it was recently suggested that I might find it beneficial to attend some self-help style training from Landmark Education.

Their brochure was suspiciously full of ™ trademark symbols on odd expressions, like The Vicious Circle™. (Note: The misuse of a trademark as a noun was theirs, not mine.) It also included some arbitrary, but poorly explained redefinitions of basic terms, like “possibility” and “rackets™”.

I commented to a friend about the odd over-trademarking I had seen and she responded “Let me guess! Was it Landmark? They’re scarey! It’s like a pyramid cult scheme.”

So, I did a bit of research on the web, and sure enough there was a lot of information out there. Some were evangelical “it changed my life” articles. Some were pathetic “you won’t know how good it is until your try it” claims. Many were dark stories of brainwashing, pyramid schemes and hard-selling.

The Wikipedia entry on Landmark Education was surprisingly illuminating given the controversial nature of the subject.

The simplest summary I can give is probably this: I would never call Landmark Education a cult; they sue the people who do.