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Video: Inside the Landmark Forum November 19, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Life, the universe, and everything, Links , add a comment

A recent comment led me to this page, containing hidden camera footage of the Landmark Forum.  There is a video stream (and pdf transcript) of a French documentary with English subtitles.

“Since 1995, Landmark Education has actually been considered a cult.”

“Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus”, or in French “Voyage Au Pays Des Nouveaux Gourous”, paints a damningly negative portrait of Landmark Education.  Litigation has made it difficult to track down a copy of the documentary at all, so I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to watch it.

“But brainwashing is just that: it happens without the victim knowing it.”

To be fair, the documentary is pretty one-sided.  And the background music cued up to tell you whenever Landmark is about to do something sleazy gets really tiring.  But there are some powerful images of what goes on inside the secretive world of large group awareness training programs (LGATs).

Your thoughts?

u r the best November 15, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Other , add a comment

Some of you may remember a previous post, in which a guy asked me to help him be more socially successful.  His relationships with women were the one part of his life in which he felt like a failure, and the burden of letting down his family was really weighing on him.  I was scared because I wasn’t sure if I was the right person for the job.  But I got this from him today:

 O by the way, u r the best, ur training gave me dates and a girlfriend.

Best email ever.

Your thoughts?

To be or not to be (a grad student) November 13, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Graduate school, Personal , 3 comments

Do I really want to go back to grad school in the spring?  Two years for a Ph.D. from Berkeley is hard to turn down, but more and more it’s starting to feel like grad school is taking me toward a destination I’m no longer interested in.

When I first got to grad school, I really liked the idea of being a professor.  It’s still somewhat appealing, but not as exciting as it once was.  At being at Berkeley has made it abundantly clear that I’m simply not smart enough to be a professor at a top-tier university.

But I still liked the idea of doing research, so I spent last summer doing an internship at Philips Research, getting a taste of what research in industry is like.  Philips was great.  I can’t imagine a more supportive, flexible environment, with nearly complete freedom for whatever topics of research I wanted to pursue.  But I wasn’t happy.

I look around at my coworkers, and no one I’ve met in the tech world or academia really has the sort of lifestyle that I envy.  If I don’t have any role models in my line of work, perhaps I’m in the wrong line of work?

What I’m really drawn toward now is entrepreneurship.  I want to be in charge of my own life, my own time, and my own money.  I’m excited by the high-risk, high-reward earning potential.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any big ideas to run with in the near future.

Craig points out that this isn’t a bad thing.  I shouldn’t be leaving grad school to pursue some business idea, because that idea is probably going to go under.  Not possibly, but probably, if the statistics have anything to say about it.  The right reason to leave is realizing that I’m simply not on the right path anymore.  That’s the only way to have future projects fail without secondguessing myself and my decision.

Your thoughts?

Beware of the Cult Awareness Network November 13, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Life, the universe, and everything, Personal , add a comment

I just finished reading Margaret Singer’s Cults in Our Midst. The book is disturbing.  As much as we take pride in our resistance to influence, there are groups out there that are able to profoundly change people’s worldviews within a very short span of time.

The Cult Awareness Network used to be a powerful resource for those whose friends or family had been seduced by a cult.  However, the legal fees stemming from a series of lawsuits from Scientologists bankrupted CAN, following which a Scientologist bought the company.  The unwitting who now call the CAN for help find themselves confronted by an organization that now has, shall we say, a somewhat different set of priorities.

Your thoughts?

My cousin’s dog is weird November 11, 2006

Posted by Niels in : Personal , add a comment

Last night he ate an entire roll of toilet paper and my mom’s sock. We mourn their untimely demise.

Your thoughts?