Praise the Lord and pass the carved wooden phallus
A niche market for anyone who's recently bought a lathe, via dealbreaker. On the one hand, anyone who has ever played rugby will know that there's always some type trying to do the "manliness", let's-all-take-our-clothes-off-and-have-a-bonding-experience thing; usually this character isn't even original enough to be a closet case. On the other hand, the guy who objected to this corporate weekend is "a chiropractor turned negligence lawyer", ie, about as unattractive a plaintiff as you could possibly invent. So it goes.
They also mention "Landmark". I once had a conversation about Landmark weekends which went on for nearly twenty minutes before it turned out that they were talking about self-realisation and development while I was talking about a plan to spend a weekend getting pissed in a converted lighthouse with my mates.
Quote of note from John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said:
ReplyDeleteAlmost everyone had at least one encounter with EST. A woman who Bob Albrecht, the People's Computer Company founder, had been involved with went through the training and came back transformed into a very un-Zen-like creature. She no longer believed that everything was interconnected, but rather had decided that she wanted it all for herself and would do anything to get it.
In Search of Stupidity [1]touches on EST too, as an explanation of why quite a lot of early movers in the IT world no longer exist.
ReplyDelete[1] Which is probably the most D^2 business management book I can think of.
What exactly is EST, or have I failed reading comprehension on the article?
ReplyDeleteAFAICT, Scientology without the religious overcoat.
ReplyDeleteSomething like "Eberhard Seminar Training", can't be bothered to look it up. It's the cod-psychology theory behind the Landmark courses - I think Richard's right that it originated with Scientology but split off in some way or other.
ReplyDeleteIME, people's relationship with the Landmark Educational Trust tends to go:
1. "I don't know, I just feel a bit down, probably due to losing my job/relationship".
2. "WOW! I just found out about this Landmark thing and it's amazing!"
3. "why won't you come along to the Landmark course Danny, you should come along to the Landmark course it would be really good for you Danny.
4. "I've stopped going. I don't want to talk about it".
5. [period of embarrassment and silence]
6. "Landmark, eh? What was all that about then?"
Experiences with the Landmark Trust tend to go:
1. "Hey this is a great idea, let's go off for the weekend and stay in a converted lighthouse!"
2. "Wow that was awesome! Let's stay in a hunting lodge!"
3. "Shit, this is expensive".
4. [time passes]
5. "Landmark Trust eh? What was that all about?"
Erhard Seminar Training, as in Werner Erhard, used-car salesman (yes, really) turned guru, spelling as per Drucker.
ReplyDeleteThe Wikipedia articles on est, Landmark, etc are hilarious, specifically the bits about the byzantine and ferociously embittered lawsuits over their "intellectual property". Now that really is a case of two bald men fighting over a comb. A comb with no teeth.
est [sic] gave Mike Oldfield the realisation that actually what he really wanted was to sell lots of records and be really successful, and what was he messing around for eh? This is why he made three original albums, whose names people still remember, between 1973 and 1978 and six, none of which anyone has heard of, between 1979 and 1984. Mind you, Shriekback raved about it too, and they were OK. I've got a vague memory of Polly Toynbee going to an est session for the Graun - can that be right? (And then, midway through the afternoon, I got it...) Maybe it was Jill Tweedie.
ReplyDelete"a chiropractor turned negligence lawyer", ie, about as unattractive a plaintiff as you could possibly invent.
ReplyDeleteThis has come up before, but I don't think I bothered mentioning: chiropractic apparently has some awful connotation/association in the UK that's almost entirely absent (afaik) in the US. I guess in the UK they're some sort of homeopathic/alternate medicine/woo profession? Here they're pretty much just the doctors that you go to when you wake up with a crick in your neck. There's a certain skepticism as to whether they're "real" doctors* or just glorified masseurs, but they're not disreputable, at least not among any group of people I've spent time among.
* I think that some are involved as expert witnesses in whiplash suits and the like