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#Post#: 3--------------------------------------------------
Inside The Landmark Forum
By: Anton Mackay Date: August 30, 2013, 12:58 am
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"You're lying. You don't love your daughter. You just wanted her
to keep away from men because you were rejected by men. You
ruined her life, admit it, for your own selfish purposes. If you
want to help her now, you can go kill yourself. No, that's not
good enough. Get cancer. Make it last for 29 years so you suffer
and die."
The woman on the stand bursts into tears--"Yes, I am a bitch,"
she admits--and the leader of the Landmark Forum, Alain Roth,
leans forth in victory on the stage. She has "cracked": a
breakthrough moment.
This scene begins the 2004 French Channel Three report on the
Landmark Education Forum in Paris. Reporters hiding secret
cameras had snuck into the Landmark, a self-help program
launched in 1991 as the successor to Est, after Werner Erhard,
the founder of the organization, escaped from the United States
a millionaire, to avoid possible imprisonment for tax evasion.
It was this TV program that closed down the Landmark in France,
leaving it only 24 other countries in which to spread its word.
Seeing this TV program, I was curious whether the French
reporters had themselves manipulated the presentation of the
Landmark or whether this organization, revered as "life
changing" by so many professionals and associates I knew in the
US, was truly the amazing fix they claimed: a three day seminar
that can jump-start a new life. One woman in the US said it made
her confront her mother, who had beat her, after 20 years of
avoiding all contact. Another woman claimed that if I had only
participated in the Landmark Forum, my relationship with my
partner would have been saved.
There was a reason to give the Landmark the benefit of the
doubt. The Channel Three program--which circulated on YouTube,
until the Landmark subpoenaed the site and got it
suppressed--seemed to carefully select its scenes of abuse and
brainwashing, out of context. It was edited with racy soundtrack
music that made it sound like a spy investigation. And it also
reflected a French bias: that radical self-confrontation was
always already a suspect activity. Quite frankly, it did seem
true that the woman on the stand had manipulated her daughter.
What could be at stake was a re-evaluation of the meaning of
"parental love", unsettling cherished French clichés about how
relationships worked.
I arranged with the Landmark Education Forum to take the seminar
in London with Sophie McLean, a charismatic 47 year old French
Moroccan, self-proclaimed to have once been a socialite,
jet-setting from party to party until she too, at age 33, took
the Landmark course and realized she wanted "to contribute to
society." Sophie would be the ideal leader to learn from: she is
the official spokeswoman for the Forum.
The first day was inspiring enough. 150 participants sat in a
pleasant room in downtown London and listened to Sophie give a
humorous lively presentation of the Landmark's key tenets. We
learn that most people perceive their future in terms of their
past, using past traumas to interpret and predict what will
happen to them in the future. "The problem with most people is
that they put their past where their future should be," smiles
Sophie, elegantly dressed in a ruffled green shirt and midriff
blazer. She draws three circles on the board, with past,
present, future, and adds arrows to show the absurd reversal of
time: a distortion the Landmark claims to solve by day three.
She brings up Citizen Kane as an example of a man who lived his
future in the wrong direction, ending his life back where he
started, obsessed with his childhood sled.
Already it seemed that Channel Three had unfairly presented the
program as a cult using brainwashing techniques à la Taliban in
Afghan internment camps. The TV announcers had said the room was
purposefully darkened with no windows, that people were not
allowed to go to the bathroom except on a limited break during
the entirety of each twelve hour day of the three day weekend,
and that eating, except for one evening meal, was prohibited. I
had come ready with candy bars in my pockets and a small
flashlight for light recuperation, to avoid my own brainwashing.
The truth was that we had breaks every two hours, at which point
I stuffed myself with delicacies at various local London diners.
Having a restless syndrome, I also excused myself to the
bathroom every half-hour. While the shades were drawn behind
Sophie, giving the focus on her form, behind us the London
daylight, or its simulacrum, kept us aglow.
Perhaps the Forum had changed its Draconian techniques since
that TV program. But it had not changed its method. Participants
were invited to the microphone to present their problems, and
while speaking, Sophie would begin to smile, circle closer to
the participant, look them up and down with a steady glance,
keeping her two feet firm on the ground, a rather effective
theater technique, and then suggest: "tell me what happened to
you when you were seven. What happened that is similar to the
way you are treating your husband now?"
One by one, participants who had been complaining about their
husbands, mothers, employers, children, began to realize how
unfairly they were dumping their resentments from childhood onto
everyone around them. Without exception, each participant would
burst into tears and realize what a "worm" she or he was. Sophie
teased them humorously. "When you die, the tombstone will read,
X was abandoned at a school one afternoon by her parents, and
her life has been a revenge on that moment ever since. The end.
What a worm you are." The smile would disarm the participant
with its evocation of tough love, and the concluding statement
was always a heartfelt: "thank you."
How could one argue with these basic tenets of the Landmark
Forum? We all know how we approach new situations with
prejudices of the past. Many theorists have even developed whole
systems of thought from this premise: Freud, for example.
Besides Sophie's interrogation at the stand had none of Alain
Roth's nasty brutality in the TV program: no suggestions to
throw oneself over a bridge or get cancer. This was a lot milder
than I expected, and even helpful.
The tenets are prologue to practice. The main activity of the
Landmark is to make--not urge--participants to apologize to the
people around them for the "rackets" they have dumped on them. A
racket is a state of being, Sophie explained, a story one tells
oneself where one is a victim in a permanent state of complaint.
We are constantly affixing "stories" to events rather than
seeing the separation between "event" and "interpretation," and
these stories are usually based in our self-righteous feeling of
being wronged. Homework assignments were to call our loved ones
and apologize for the years of victimology; coffee breaks became
the cherished moment to make phone calls to parents and friends.
By Sunday, participants tearfully explained in testimonies how
they had made breakthroughs with family members they had not
spoken to for years. One husband of a participant even came to
an evening session to thank the leader for giving him back his
wife.
There was nothing too objectionable about a program that has as
a result reconciliation in relationships, as well as a new
commitment to responsibility for one's present. Philosophically,
the concepts are too sensible to be controversial. Forgiveness
is a key feature of most of the world religions; so is living
for a clean present. The idea reiterated by Sophie throughout
the program, that one must have integrity and honor one's word,
cannot help but make anyone feel like a better person.
So where is the rub? Why has the Landmark been subject to so
many lawsuits and claims of being a cult?
The most criminal aspect of the Landmark Forum's insistence on
its methodology is precisely that: its insistence on its
methodology. I clocked two hours the first day devoted to
"spreading the word" of the Landmark forum as a sign of the
participants' "integrity." If they had integrity, they would,
like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, take courage to
spread the beliefs of the Landmark Forum to all their friends,
enroll them in the program, get them to come to the famed
Tuesday night ending ceremony for their free introductory
session. I clocked four hours devoted to this subject on
Saturday. I clocked the first three hours of the Sunday session
to the subject: including suggestions to bring our children for
special youth landmark forums geared to get them started early
in the Landmark, at age fifteen (alone) or at age eight (if
accompanied by a parent). Yes even little ones have rackets.
Participants, having heard the argument drone in their ears for
9 hours in a period of 72, began to cheer and smile as they
raised their hands to say they too had the courage to stand for
the Forum.
This was brainwashing. I began to clench my fists in the back as
I heard the conflation of Martin Luther King, integrity and the
Landmark Forum. I now went to the microphone, and asked my
question. I had noticed that all questions objecting to the
Forum were turned into problems of the self: the ad hominem
argumentative strategy seemingly working on all 150
participants, who cheered as any person with an objection was
pushed to confront the fact that their own lives were a wreck,
from whence came their question. A woman objected to what I
considered the most objectionable exercise: the participants had
been asked to close their eyes and imagine being afraid of their
neighboring participants, then the entire group of 150, then all
7 million of London and finally the 6 billion fellow creatures
on the planet, an exercise that had turned into mass hysteria of
crying, sobbing, calling out "mommy mommy!" in regressed
childhood voices, this until Sophie invited them to laugh, to
reach the conclusion that while these 6 billion were
frightening, imagine how afraid people were of you! Think of the
bombed people in Iraq--aren't they afraid of us? The crowd, on
command, burst into hysterical howls of laughter, aching belly
howls that went on and on and on, an event which frightened me
far more than my 6 billion co-inhabitants, as a demonstration of
how easily mass emotion can be created, just by urging one to
recall primordial fears.
The woman who objected to the hysteria was asked if there was
"something behind her question": perhaps a further disagreement
with her estranged husband? Perhaps her own inability to stand
up to her beliefs, or honor her breakthrough in the previous
session about how she was being a worm in her marriage? The
woman burst into tears and thankfully agreed: a new
breakthrough!
I snuck into the stall next to this woman when she took a
bathroom break and told her I thought she had been manipulated.
The woman said she did not care. The insights she had gotten
about her relationship were far more important.
Then I went to the stand. I noted I agreed with the basic tenets
of the program, but I questioned the slippery propagation of
these tenets: the idea that these tenets were original to the
Forum, rather than an intelligent hodgepodge of the best of East
and Western philosophy; the evangelical emphasis on telling our
friends; the insistence that integrity should be applied to us
spreading the word of the Forum, rather than to beliefs we
already had developed in our lives and professions. Finally, I
questioned the odd apolitical bias of the program. Martin Luther
King and Ghandi were not just victors of positive thinking: they
had a radical political agenda to re-adjust political
inequality. Their belief system was based in believing in
something more than ourselves.
Why were we being compared to Gandhi and King if we could stand
up to our husbands and get a more successful career?
Let us say the participants were not on my side. I was being a
party-pooper. If the stakes were higher, I might have been
stoned. As it was, I was just asked by Sophie what was "behind
my question."
"Nothing is behind my question besides my question," I noted.
(Note: as a journalist I had to sign a form that I could not
quote or paraphrase any participants in my article; I would hope
that my own words are admissible.)
"Are you always so arrogant? Are you always such a know it all?"
Sophie moved closed, circled to me next to the mike, and looked
deeply into my eyes. "Tell me Karin, do your friends run away
from you? Do you know how self-righteous you seem to them?"
I had been prepared and curious to see what ad hominen approach
she would come up with me. I was--as many people--inherently
egotistical and vulnerable to judgment--so was intrigued to see
what I could learn about myself. I had an intelligent woman's
cunning attention. Someone was finally telling me how it was,
daring to sum up my personality in a way that most of my friends
would not dare to. I experienced for myself the allure, the
thrill, each participant had experienced before the attack on
stage. It is intoxicating to get full attention in front of l50
people from someone who is truly gifted, as many fortune tellers
are, with the power of quickly sizing up and reading one's
personality.
Also as a professor, I am used to manipulation from students who
have not done their homework and risk failing a course: they
will use any method to get me to "weaken" my stand. Such as
reminding me of my own faults in a course, or using a charming
smile, or, as Sophie was doing, sidling up and standing two
inches away from me as she asked me if people did not like me.
I quickly ran through my appallingly brief list of friends and
wondered if she was right. Was I self-righteous? Had people run?
If they had, I concluded, I would not even know: they were long
gone down the jogging trail.
"No," I said. The crowd snickered. I was not breaking. What an
ass I was not to admit my faults. I felt like offering up some
other of my defects--of which there were plenty I already knew
about before this moment of enlightenment--to win people to my
side, to have their looks of empathy after the session, as
everyone else who had sobbed about their faults had as well.
What is worse than a know-it-all who could not admit she was a
know-it-all?
Sophie seemed exhausted as I just repeated my question, and
repeated again that behind my question was just intellectual
curiosity about how the Forum worked. Not my break-up with my
boyfriend, my miscarriages, my mother speaking with an accent
when I was five years old in a New Jersey kindergarten.
"Okay you win," Sophie said. "You win but you have won nothing.
This is why your life is a wreck. This is why nothing works for
you. Go on, continue. But I urge you to spend the weekend
questioning your integrity."
"A lifelong project," I said.
"Arrogant," Sophie said. "Rebellious child who has to get the
last word."
We stood in silence in a truce. Sophie froze with an icy smile.
I realized I would probably not be able to get the private
interview I wanted with her for my article. I would be shunned.
The extent of my unpopularity was revealed when I sat down, and
all the participants avoided my eyes, except three people who
came and put their hands on my shoulder, as if I needed comfort
for my "humiliation." One man eagerly told me: "We were all
waiting to see when your armor would break, but no you stayed
composed."
Why were they all waiting in gleeful anticipation for me to
break? What does this say about group psychology?
Sophie announced a break herself right after our conversation,
as if she too was disoriented, as revealed by the
uncharacteristic lack of charisma in her face and her stiff
shoulders. But when she came back, she was ready. She pointed
her finger at me and said: "Karin is a journalist."
The crowd nodded. She could have substituted "communist" or
"non-patriot". The effect would have been the same.
The irony was that I had no problem with the Forum. I did
experience my own breakthroughs. I was glad I went. I did see
how I used my past in my future; I did contemplate the rackets I
laid on my friends and family. I thought overall this was a
healthy experience.
I just did not see any reason to 1) prevent critical thinking
and 2) make evangelism the marketing strategy of the Forum.
It also disgusted me to see people unwilling to have their
transformative weekend tampered with by critical thinking. One
participant at the break said he objected to my critique of the
Luther and Gandhi references. True my point was valid, but
couldn't I accept that a mass of average people might get so
much mileage out of the inspiration of being compared to these
great leaders that I was spoiling their fun if I was too logical
and "intelligent" about it? Another thought I was being
needlessly picky when I pointed out that using Sarkozy as an
example of integrity (he sticks to his word; he admits his Carla
Bruni affair in public) pointed out a rather shallow rightwing
prejudice.
The last hours of the Forum were thankfully devoted back to the
life lessons of the Forum, rather than the push to call every
last friend we knew to come on Tuesday night, so that one day
the world could be "transformed" and we would live in a
community of the Forum--an urging that inspired one woman from
Slovenia to vow to open the Forum in her country, as well as a
man from Spain to do the same. Instead, Sophie gave a brilliant,
truly brilliant, performance of how human beings are like
donkeys (this said, running around the stage following an
imaginary carrot at her nose), who are always pursuing an
imaginary "someday" of satisfaction. She repeated the most
original philosophy of the Forum, one that I was quite taken by:
don't change your life, transform it. Change is based on
adjusting, modifying, always having the past dragging behind you
(like the chair she dragged behind her, in demonstration).
Transformation is simply deciding and declaring a new way of
being, tout court.
She also gave a mini-lecture on existentialism, citing
Shakespeare's "sound and fury signifying nothing" as well as a
little known poem by e.e. cummings on "nothingness". Create your
meaning; there is none inherent in the world. Do not live in
hope, but in action. As throughout the Forum, she sprinkled her
lecture with an inspiring array of quotes, including my
favorite: "A successful person goes from failure to failure with
enthusiasm" (Churchill) and concluded, per forma, with moving
descriptions of Gandhi and King.
Sophie was a gifted speaker, who kept our attention and
enthusiasm during each twelve hour day, making her speeches seem
original, with personal anecdotes; only later, searching the
web, do I find the same speeches cited by other landmark
leaders: the "nothingness" argument, the "Citizen Kane". It is a
script.
The concluding remarks were powerful. Sophie had tears in her
eyes as she thanked us for letting her serve us. (I found the
same speech on the web). She also mentioned her personal life
again, how upset she had been when on her honeymoon, as a young
girl married to an elderly millionaire, the man sadly had an
aneurism and died (leaving her millions), and how she would have
continued to live in disappointment, with rackets, but the
Landmark convinced her to leave the past behind.
At the end of the day, I found the Forum innocuous. No cult, no
radical religion: an inspiring, entertaining introduction of
good solid techniques of self-reflection, with an appropriate
emphasis on action and transformation (not change). Yes, they
urge us to proselytize, which rather than a cult technique,
might just be an unfortunate mistake in marketing strategy: I
would never urge anyone to do the Forum precisely because they
urged me to do the Forum. Such methods backfire on me.
#Post#: 4--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: Karin Badt Date: August 30, 2013, 1:08 am
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I'm disappointed to see that you did not see fit to publish my
comment that I posted yesterday. Curious to know why?
The bottom line is that Landmark/EST uses coecive techniques to
recruit members who remain as volunteer workers because they are
on an "artificial" high. It was my experience that only members
who were bringing family and friends into the Landmark "fold"
were treated nicely. As soon as their "production" went down
they were ignored, or worse, ostracised (much like Karin was
ostracised when she asked relevant and intelligent questions)
Landmark is not a forum for critical thinkers.
The "Leaders" are not trained in clinical psychiatry or
psychology (i.e. they have not spent the required time working
in a hospital or clinic with emotionally disturbed people) yet
they ARE practicing therapy without a licence, and what is
worse, they are doing it without receiving INFORMED consent. In
addition, they are "opening up wounds" from the past (using
Primal Therapy and Hypnosis) without providing any support for
when people envariably "crash". Landmark/EST is a mennace to
society.
Perhaps the reason you did not see fit to publish my comment of
yesterday is because this is not really an open forum for
discussion, rather a forum to promote Landmark/EST?
#Post#: 5--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: Karin Badt Date: August 30, 2013, 1:11 am
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Lanse
The points made in your comment (primal therapy, therapy without
a license, hypnosis, "crash") are not only unture, but
innacurate to the point of being laughable. There is nothing
therapeutic at all in the work of the Landmark Forum, and the
work being done is performed by leaders (yes, real leaders) who
are highly competent in its delivery.
As for it not being an environment of critical thinking, I would
beg to differ, as would the Nobel laureates, world-renouned
scientists, Zen masters and other esteemed "thinkers" who have
participated in the Landmark Forum.
I can only hope that people have the sense to think for
themselves and check out the program on their own, and not be
swayed by the crazed rantings of uninformed reactionaries. And I
especially enjoyed the dramatic effect of the "menace to
society" line. That's a real knee-slapper!
#Post#: 6--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: heyletsevolve Date: August 30, 2013, 1:19 am
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just curious to see how quickly comments are in fact posted
#Post#: 7--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: heyletsevolve Date: August 30, 2013, 1:20 am
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I've posted here three times and you've only printed one of my
posts.
Am I not allowed to say that I absolutely despise the Landmark
Forum? That this article was far too kind? That people should
research Landmark thoroughly before getting involved? Landmark
has a very ungly and deep dark side. Can I say that here?
#Post#: 8--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: Thomascino1 Date: August 30, 2013, 1:24 am
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perhaps you are right "heyletsevolve", we shall see. I posted a
comment yesterday outlining a lot of information that a lot of
people don't know about Landmark/EST and it was not published. I
have posted another comment today, questioning why it was not
published, so if my comments of today are edited or not
published, i will know that this "Blog" is really intended as a
promotional tool for Landmark/EST.
#Post#: 9--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: Lanse Date: August 30, 2013, 1:27 am
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A more accurate title for this article would have been “Inside
The Head of Karin Badt.” Given the opportunity to present a real
“critical thinking” piece on The Landmark Forum, it’s a shame
that what we got instead is just a dressed up hack job. And
granted, it was written as an assessment, so Ms. Badt is
certainly entitled to hers, but the real disservice is that the
assessment could be read as what the program really is. And
would it have been so much to ask for her to at least get her
facts straight? Werner Erhard did not escape the U.S. and all
his disputes with the IRS have all long ago been settled, and in
his favor. Of course, that kind of “reporting” would take actual
fact-finding, and not just going for the sensational pandering
to those hungry for dirt. And any elementary examination of what
actual brainwashing is would also have precluded Ms. Badt from
using the term in reference to the course. The article is full
of cheap generalizations and dismissals, potentially leaving the
reader with the impression that The Landmark Forum is for needy,
pathetic people in search of some kind of guidance, and that
all-in-all the course is nothing more than a rehashed version of
tried and true principles for operating effectively in life.
Also, the comments that the organization is run by “obsessed
volunteers” and that people are “made to” do anything, including
apologize to loved ones, are just flat out untrue. And the
reference to Gandhi was in no means politically biased, only
used to illustrate what is possible when one human being takes a
stand for what’s possible, in the face of the prevailing
cynicism.
I am a successful writer, filmmaker, and political and social
activist, who has had the real privilege to participate in the
work of Landmark Education, and I can say, as a critical
thinker, an activist, an ordinary human being who stands for a
world that works, and not as a “reporter,” that the Landmark
Forum is for people with the courage to examine their lives and
life in general, not as a means of getting fixed, but as an
access to making the biggest contribution that they can. The
people who really participate in the course, not those there
merely to assess, are courageous enough to tell the truth about
where they have given up, where they have become resigned, where
they have stopped thinking, and in that moment of real choice,
to empower themselves to create a life that makes the kind of
difference in the world around them that is a match for who they
really are, and not the story about who they are that they have
been living inside of.
The Landmark Forum in an occasion for real and critical
thinking, not just assessing what fits or doesn’t fit with
what’s already there in the existing mindset. Ms. Badt seems to
have deeply held beliefs and heated debate collapsed with
critical thinking. And assessing collapsed with real reporting.
It is a shame that because of that, we are left more with how
she views life than the real story on The Landmark Forum.
#Post#: 10--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: heyletsevolve Date: August 30, 2013, 1:29 am
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--as a critical thinker, an activist, an ordinary human being
who stands for a world that works,--
See, that's Landmark jargon right there. In Landmark, you have
to "stand" for things, or for the "possibility" of things -- in
fact, you have to "be a stand" for things. You can even BE a
stand for the possibility of something!
You "stand" for a world that works. Why don't you "stand" for
thinking for yourself and using your own language, not jargon
that has been implanted in your head. You sound like a drone.
#Post#: 11--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: Lanse Date: August 30, 2013, 1:30 am
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Just so you know, I stood for a world that works before my
participation with Landmark, and I still do. And I'll pit the
thinking I've done, the actual actions I've taken and the
results i've produced in line with that against you anyday. "You
sound like a drone." Now there's some real original thinking!
What if you could actually think, rather than just comparing and
assessing, like a true drone? Wouldn't that be something!
#Post#: 12--------------------------------------------------
Re: Inside The Landmark Forum
By: Tillamook Date: August 30, 2013, 1:33 am
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I attended the Landmark Forum less than a month ago, and there
were a few things in this story that I found inconsistent with
my experience.
First, I didn’t perceive that the content was preached as “the
absolute truth.” To the contrary, my forum leader hammered home
that “none of this is the truth”. I experienced the Forum as the
presentation of a compelling theory of the human state, not as
some strict quasi-religious dogma. There were ideas that were
clearly inspired by Zen’s nothingness and Gandhi’s pursuit of
truth, but I never heard any claim that these were originally
conceived by Landmark or its founder. A for-profit company
cribbed from Buddha, Maslow, Perls and Gandhi to create a
plausible and useful theory on the human experience, and they
sell it to guys like me for $495. Do we have to get all weird
about that, like it’s some insidious assault on our free will?
Second, the story’s description of participant behavior made it
sound like it’s some sort of tent revival in which the author
was nearly lynched by an angry mob caught up in group psychosis.
That wasn’t my experience at all. As an analytically-minded male
engineer, I sat in the Forum for most of my first day with my
arms folded and occasionally muttering “That’s bullshit” to the
material. Following the “Fear Exercise” described in the
article, I got up in front of the group to complain that I
didn’t get it, that I was unable to artificially make myself
afraid. This turned me a reluctant magnet for other “skeptics”
who introduced themselves to me to be supportive and share their
own breakthroughs and doubts with me. It was a group of normal
people experiencing the ideas in different ways, and above all,
the environment was empathetic, not hostile.
I acknowledge the part of Karin that wanted to challenge the
forum leader to a battle of wits, but the battle itself sounded
contrived and senseless. Karin’s position is that Sophie is a
charlatan playing the game with a stacked deck, so Karin would
cheat too, by asking a journalist’s questions (Landmark
Education’s lack of a public political agenda?!) and denying
that Sophie’s observations resonated with her. Who cares who
wins a game like that? Was it worth the cost? I guess it gave
the story an exciting climax.
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