The Macho Response: Gays, Women & Warping Reality

• Straight women and homosexual men are the most natural allies 

 • Relationship characterised by a lack of sexual competition and deception 

 • Straight women more trusting of gay men over women or straight men

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

― George Orwell

Worse is the evangelism, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm that comes across as the arrogance of youth and groupthink. It has its own lingo, its own social norms, and of course you must pay top dollar to enter. No wonder it reminds me of Landmark Forum.

After working for the company for six months, Wilson would pay for employees to attend Landmark Forum, a kind of "group therapy-cum-self-help seminar."

"The idea that you could shape reality to look however you wanted suddenly seemed dangerous, easily abused, especially among my Type A co-workers, who exercised and worked and exercised and worked and ate so little that it was not really a surprise that someone, eventually, snapped."

"Too Bad (Our Gay & Feminist Friends Said Otherwise)"

-TMR, December 23, 2013

"Hey, it's cheaper than therapy," a therapist-turned-real estate agent tells me. He ponders how to persuade one of his employees to pony up for the Forum. She's going through a rough patch, he explains—the recession, her marriage.

The central character, Amelia, arrives at Sutton McGrath and Feingold to help one particularly stressed-out employee, Jun Suk, with his presentation skills. But, Amelia quickly gets swept up in the turbulence of downsizing, office hook-ups and self-medicating.

"The Consultant" looks at one,...company office to get at the bigger picture of working life today.

Along the way, the play pokes fun at a lot of aspects of contemporary New York City, from the putdowns aimed at those who live in Murray Hill, to the way that graduates of the "The Forum" -- 1970s guru Werner Erhard's offshoot of est -- can drive their friends and co-workers crazy with tales of the way their lives have improved after the seminars.

The Daily Show

Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

These Things Take Concentration And Practice

“If there’s one thing that’s been proven in all of this, it’s that it shouldn’t be surprising that a yoga mogul could so effortlessly put his foot in his mouth.”

Raising Awareness, Reach Your Full Potential, Make A Difference, With Yoga, Your Soulmate And Asian Food

It's nice to see people are catching on to the difference between cults and their mere (but still torturous and harmful-to-business) offspring - cultish thinking. Why do we live with this? How have we - Americans - grown accustomed to it? 

  It's a pretty standard collection of corporate psychology types, none of whom have any obvious connection to Scientology (or to Landmark, a quasi-cult,…)

...It's just a semi-extreme version of the kind of "management philosophy" you'll find in a lot of companies today--walks like a cult, talks like a cult, almost definitely isn't,…

I used to try and explain that distinction, and the experience, all the time. Nice to see we're getting somewhere. (But when will we make a connection between corporate cultish thinking and our lousy business climate? I don't want to work in these places, with anyone into the mind set, or buy their products.) It's also nice to see people are catching on to The Landmark Forum finally:

But it's still disappointing it isn't Lululemon or Panda Express,...

The Circle: In Or Out Somebody's Going To Be A Target

Cults, cultism, "cultish thinking" throughout American society? That Crack Emcee has been out of his fucking mind - for years. You hear me? He's obviously seeing things:

The Circle occupies an awkward place of satire and self-importance. What it does very well is create a catalogue of awful techno-cum-Landmark Forum-cum-HR-cum-feelings-speak. Uncle Eamon is legitimately avuncular and creepy. When Mae is chastised for failing to Zing about her hobbies, a colleague says “‘Just kayaking? Do you realize that kayaking is a three-billion-dollar industry? And you say it’s ‘just kayaking’! Mae, don’t you see that it’s all connected? You play your part. You have to part-icipate.’” And this stuff is often very funny. (These days, though, it’s hard to write a novel that can rival the comedy gold of reality. This week, Nathan Heller has a piece in The New Yorker about San Francisco’s startup culture: “The company had needed to figure out whether to spend its limited budget on beef jerky to keep around the office or 401k plans for the staff. ‘We put it to a vote: ‘Do you want a 401k or jerky?…The vote was unanimously for jerky. The thought was that well-fed developers could create value better than the stock market.’” Or this gem: “Serge was a software professional who, in his spare time, led people into deeply meditative states from which they could reëxperience earlier lives. Some people found that passing through past lives eased their fears of death, Serge told me that evening.”)

Crack better give it up or else the group's not going to like him,...

 

Vegan Joints Are Cults (So Is Yoga Still Not Spiritual?)

The Skeptical Vegan is making an amazing admission - and providing a great service:

"The vegan and vegetarian communities are philosophically and religiously diverse and while secular veganism is growing in the west, still in the US and much of the world religious groups of one sort or another dominate the vegetarian and vegan culture. Most of us are familiar with Hindu-run curry houses or Buddhist tofu joints but there are also many other places run by devotees of smaller 'new religious movements' or cults*. In the following series of posts I will be taking a deeper look into some of these businesses and the groups behind them."

There are five chapters, so far, all featuring figures and cults previously covered on TMR. Click the Red links, and then check out my tags at the bottom of the post, to see who the cults are, how they're trying to exploit us, and how much ground I've covered for the whole truth on these wonderful human beings:

Waiter, There’s Woo in My Food: Sri Chinmoy

Waiter, There’s Woo in My Food, Part 2: Supreme Master Ching Hai

Waiter, There's Woo in My Food, Part 3: African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem & Soul Vegetarian

Waiter, There’s Woo in My Food, Part 4: Landmark Forum & Cafe Gratitude

Waiter, There’s Woo in My Food, Part 5: Falun Gong

I'm Not "In The Red" Or "Out Of The Red" (I Read A Lot)

Matthew McConaughey Takes an Alternative Approach to Medicine in the ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ Trailer

Former Scientologist Anette Iren Johansen 'auditioned' to be Tom Cruise's wife before he married Katie Holmes

"Carlson's conclusion, then, rests on all of the following highly dubious premises: that she accurately characterizes the purpose of the measures to which she refers as being 'to restrict voting rights,' that those measures are 'almost as pernicious' as impossible-to-pass literacy tests that were administered only to blacks, that voter fraud is either nonexistent or so rare as to be a trivial concern, and that space aliens have flown over Kansas."

  "They met at a course offered by the Landmark Forum, an organization that has been described as cultlike."

Pat Robertson: Gay people will cut you and give you AIDS with special rings

When the Popular Youth Pastor Gets Arrested Again

Getting The Picture (The Big One)

Most people seem to be coming to the realization that Scientology is a cult. Part of the reason for that is Scientology's adherence to the time-tested cult practice of inventing cult jargon that only fellow members understand while laughing maniacally.

I, for instance, would be considered an "SP" in Scientology-speak, or a "Suppressive Person". Oprah Winfrey - another familiar cult leader - calls us "Energy Vampires" (which is Nazi-speak for anyone who doesn't buy into the cult leader's bullshit.) Using cult jargon as a guide, it looks like Jezebel is catching on to Lululemon Athletica's yoga cult now:

"GEC" stands for "Guest Education Center" — the Orwellian name Lululemon gives its customer service call center. "Educator" is a Lululemon sales associate.

Here's how they're describing Lululemon Athletica's founder, Chip Wilson, after mentioning he's been enamored with Ayn Rand's Objectivist cult for a while:

"Wilson seems a touch megalomaniacal. He talks to reporters about creating a Lululemon 'constitution,' a philosophy he bases on a mishmash of The Secret and the Landmark Education Forum."

Click Chip Wilson's tag, below - He's a hoot. As if to make the point clear, The Guardian, U.K., has a new comment on The Landmark Forum that Lululemon "employees are encouraged to attend":

"It sounds rather cult-like."

But come on. Ever since the last election - and that minor discussion of what Mitt Romney and his wife are into - people have started saying that about everything. Let's be clear - taking what we've learned today from those looking at Lululemon:

The cultists are just Tom Cruise and Scientology, Oprah Winfrey and her show and network, Chip Wilson, Lululemon, people who do yoga, the Nazis (my contribution) Ayn Rand and all her followers (in and out of government), plus the billions who bought The Secret. 

That's it. No one else. Nothing to worry about. The 20th Century is over. 

I've been assured, by some of the best minds out there, not to worry:

 

Everybody else is totally in the clear,...

Physically And Emotionally (They Bite Without Warning)

Oooh, some music reviewers really know how to do a total burn:

"Lowrider make listening to their fourth album feel like you're trapped in the vortex of a Landmark Forum 'official' afterparty where everyone is smiling dolphin grins and assuring each other,…"

Sounds like Lowrider should change their name to Love Bomb. 

   

And I hate to say it, but - 8 years later - dolphins still creep me out,...

 

No Escape: Segregation May Be A Good Idea After All,...

Man, I love that photo. Considering I've spent most of my time in Europe around Germany and France - and was married to a French murderess - I guess it was inevitable I'd run into this madness:

In the CAMbrella report we identified that: herbal medicine is used by up to half the people studied; homoeopathy, surprisingly, is used by about 30% of Europeans using CAM; chiropractic and acupuncture by up to 20% of CAM users; and dietary supplements by almost everyone. We have estimated that this service is provided by 328,000 registered CAM providers, comprising of 178,000 non-medical practitioners and 150,000 medical doctors. Acupuncture (96,380) is the most available therapy practised by both, physicians (80,000) and non-medical practitioners (16,380). We also estimated that there are 65 CAM providers for every 100,000 EU citizens. The UK has one of the most organised approaches to registration and regulation for non-medically qualified practitioners who provide most of these clinical interventions. In the rest of the EU, particularly in Germany and France, these treatments are almost always part of medical practice in both the community and in hospitals.

I had no warning, whether from here or there, just the stories we're told and have always been told - about everything - by and about the "good" people. A fun-fact about our wonderful education system:

This was not some alien machete-wielding bloodlust. It was methodical and systematic and conducted with cold efficiency by men who read poetry and listened to string quartets afterwards. 

They turned upside-down the paraphernalia of progress to achieve it. Architects planned the camps – an interesting challenge, presumably, for no one had designed this kind of concentration camp before. Sewage engineers surveyed them, installing drainage ditches in the marshland ' and effluent treatment plants to avoid polluting local rivers. Rail officials timetabled the steady influx of trains to Birkenau, selected by Himmler for its good railway links. 

This was extermination on an industrial scale and it involved huge numbers of people. Neighbours and employers reported Jews to the Gestapo. Bureaucrats processed notices of deportation. Postmen served them. Railway staff marshalled their departure. Others drove the trains and manned the signals. It was all logically and legally planned in an inversion of all the values on which human civilisation had been built,… 

An edifice of lies supported the whole ghastly enterprise. The camps were presented as places of resettlement. Families were told to pack a suitcase and given lists of essential clothing and goods. When they arrived, the suitcases were taken from them, and their careful contents later casually ransacked and sorted to be sold. Some knew then what this meant. "The cherished objects we had brought with us thus far were left behind in the train, and with them, at last, our illusions," wrote one survivor, Elie Wiesel. But others persisted in hope, even as the Nazis persisted in their lies. At the end of the long walk from the railway ramp, the condemned were ushered into a subterranean dressing-room. There were numbered hooks for the clothes. "Remember your number for when you come out," the guards shouted. "Children, fasten your shoes together by the laces so they don't get separated when you come out." They would, of course, be easier to sell if the pairs did not become separated. 

Even inside the killing-room the deceit persisted. There were fake shower heads in the ceiling to maintain the pretence that this was a place of cleansing until the very final minute. Then cyanide pellets were dropped through holes in the roof. Even on Nazi invoices, now in the Auschwitz museum, the mendacity continued: new supplies of Zyklon B were billed as "material for Jewish resettlement".

Delusion all-the-way. But - hey - the guards did yoga, and "you can believe what you want to believe," right? So you're told "Don't see this as a negative. We like to see this as us empowering you to take on new opportunities," but the reality is still always there, staring you in the face:

Over the last decade or so, a growing disconnect has developed between the bizarre and almost cult-like rhetoric and practices that companies use with their staff, and the increasingly grim reality of being an employee in modern day Corporate America. 

For example, anyone stumbling upon the Walmart careers website might be forgiven for thinking that Google had malfunctioned and directed them instead to the Scientologists, whose recruitment site features a collection of testimonials virtually indistinguishable in their tone of robotic devotion. 

Over at "Walmart People," Lois Givens, Personnel Manager at store number 992 assures us: "If you live your whole entire life according to the Walmart culture and three basic beliefs, life becomes a lot easier." Shana Bailey, Director of Store Operations emotes: "To this day, I continue to grow and learn, and the Walmart family is always there for me every step of the way," while Patricia Graham of the Distribution Centers adds: " Walmart is my Life (capitalization her own). When I think about it, it's amazing how many aspects of my life are touched and made better by Walmart." 

For those of us whose lives have yet to be touched by the transformative miracle of the out of town superstore, these testimonials may seem a little excessive. But these are not rogue sycophants in the company ranks. According to Michael Bergdahl, former "Director of People" for Walmart's Headquarters, and now an international speaker and consultant on the company's practices, the creation of "cult-like commitment" and devotion to the so called "Walmart Way" among its employees is the explicit aim of the company's intensive staff training program for new recruits. And lest employees forget what they have learned on the course, loyalty is reinforced daily in stores with the "Walmart cheer," a compulsory devotional chant. 

It's not just Walmart. Corporate songs are common, "reframing" disappointment for those whose lives have taken the road marked "middle manager" rather than the one marked "rockstar." "We built this Starbucks on Heart and Soul," "Blue Box Values Are the Best, I Work For American Express" and perhaps most uplifting, Big Four accountancy firm Ernst and Young's reworking of gospel anthem "Oh Happy Day" which replaced the lyrics: "When Jesus washed my sins away" with the competing message "When Ernst and Young showed me a better way." 

Once they have whipped their staff into a frenzy of corporate sycophancy, employers are increasingly expecting them to turn their whole selves over to the company's message and aims, and are employing a range of sophisticated psychological and practical techniques to achieve this. 

Silicon Valley firms encourage their employees to work ever longer hours by turning offices into playgrounds, complete with slides, graffiti walls and foosball tables. Free dinner and on site dry cleaners, dentists and hairdressers are standard ways of ensuring that staff never leave the building. Facebook made the perfect metaphor for the overworked American employee into a reality with their flagship 'Insanity Wolf' treadmill desk, which allows employees to keep running to a never materialising destination while they continue to work. I met (a rather tired looking) Facebook employee recently who was thrilled to be provided with pizza and "allowed" to work overnight on a company project of his choice at no extra pay. 

The boundaries between self and company are further blurred as employers increasingly encroach onto personal territory in order to keep their staff firmly in the workplace and not outside it. Biotech firm Genetech will organize babysitters for its staff rather than have them take time off to stay at home with a sick child. Consulting firm Deloitte offers backup care for an elderly parent or grandparent. Human Resources philosophers have ditched the mantra "work life balance" for the more sinister (and employer friendly) "work life integration." 

Corporations now aim to identify and satisfy employees' emotional needs as well as their financial ones. Major white collar employers such as UBS, American Express, KPMG and the law firm Goodwin Proctor have instituted "happiness training" for staff, drawing on a combination of psychological research and ancient religious traditions. Other employers sponsor their staff to go on courses such as the hugely popular Landmark Forum series, several full days in a group setting in which bathroom breaks are discouraged and participants are invited to share personally disturbing life events such as relationship problems and family breakdowns with the group and then go through a signature process to "heal" these issues and find lasting peace.

Oh goody! Because, if there's one thing I need, it's some more of those "ancient religious traditions" - and from my boss - to make sense of the modern world. I'm kidding, of course, but not to worry:

I'm getting my fill,…

 

Martha Marcy May Marlene: A Cult Watcher's Dream

WHOA. I've finally had the honor of watching director Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene - the first of the recent releases on cultism - and I'm pretty sure (since I understand the subject matter better than most) I saw a very, very different film than other reviewers. Maybe even different than Durkin himself. You see, while Martha Marcy May Marlene has been described as Elizabeth Olsen's breakout performance about a young woman who escapes an abusive cult, it's much more than that:

It's really a film about a woman in desperate need of a deprogrammer's snapping.

A constant in the film is Martha's sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson) asking Martha what's happened to her, and Martha - clearly in the throughs of PTSD - saying, "I don't know." And the truth is, she doesn't. Martha has no idea she's been in a cult, and neither her sister or her English brother-in-law, Ted (Hugh Dancy) even knows how to ask - both are as unaware of cultism as Martha is! When it's finally determined Martha needs "help," I deduced it'll be in the form of doctors - with medications in a mental health facility - not a cult expert who can unpeel the uber-rude onion her mind has become:

Their best guess is that Martha has fled a dodgy boyfriend, and she herself releases no further clues. Her conduct, however, hints at more than heartbreak. It is one thing to ask them, “Is it true married people don’t fuck?,” which might be no more than the provocative pose of youth; to climb into bed beside the married couple while they are making love—as Martha, schooled in group sex, naturally does—signals an insolence of another order. “That’s not normal, it’s private,” Lucy cries, and her verbal confusion pulls us toward the clever core of the movie. The easiest option, which would have produced a nifty horror flick but little else, would have been to build an ideal, love-warmed nest of the bourgeoisie and then, as in “Fatal Attraction,” have it invaded by shrieking demands from without. The effect of “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” on the other hand, is to peck away at what Lucy and Ted would claim as their well-earned happiness. Even the tiniest gestures on Martha’s part—opening a can of beer and tossing the ring-pull aside, or trying on a dress and dropping the hanger for Lucy to pick up—are invested with something more warped, or more scornful of our regular habits, than simple sloppiness. Ted never makes a definite move on Martha, but you can sense the squirm of desire within him, and when he solemnly informs her, “We are trying to have a baby,” her laugh—rich, robust, and mad—slaps him into a look of wounded panic. She already has a family, ready-made. She may have slipped its grasp for now, but not for good. When, at a low ebb, she calls the number of the farm, speaks briefly, then slams down the phone, somebody calls right back.

Which brings me to something else that dawned on me as I watched Martha Marcy May Marlene - the disconnect many might have, as I write about cults or cultish thinking, imagining the "closed" secular cult depicted in this film is what I'm referring to when I, maybe, speak of an "open" religious cult like Mormonism (or even some other kind). Nothing could be further from the truth:

Sure, to me, a cult is a cult is a cult is a cult, all applying varying amounts of pressure in direct and subtle ways on those trapped (however) within their grasp. But the mindfuckers depicted in this film bear little-to-no resemblance to the cultish thinking we usually encounter (say, through Mitt Romney's Joseph Smith-inspired peddling of useless supplements) beyond talk of "cleansing," "toxins," and the nonsensical suggestion a drugged concoction is O.K. to drink because someone says it's "herbal."

This becomes most clear when the film enters Charles Manson's arena, though - unbeknownst to the uninitiated - contemporary Mormonism has entered that territory. A cult is a cult is a cult is a cult.

But what I most want you to know is, all that aside, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a truly fine film. Probably one of the best - if not THE best - I've ever seen on the topic of cultism, since it takes it's subject matter seriously, and doesn't fall into the typical sinister foolishness of The Devil's Rejects-type hyperbole, even as it descends beyond confusion and betrayal into wickedness and horror.

And while it may not be of much assistance if you're arguing with your sister about homeopathy, or fretting about a friend's participation in The Landmark Forum, hopefully Martha Marcy May Marlene might still convince some of you that even they need a higher level of comprehension and training than either you, or your average therapist, can provide. Yes indeed, this one is really special:

Check. It. Out.