❀ the cult of: ➥motivational speakers ➥life coaches ➥personal growth gurus ➥new-age charlatans ➥AWESOMENESS FEST

So unclean! So unclean! Must cleanse myself with a big dose of:

http://edu.glogster.com/media/4/34/88/92/34889298.jpg

xp the narrator sounds like a text-to-speech program

lol there are some outlier TED Talks that are suspicious

― mh, Thursday, February 2, 2012 9:38 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The business development/futurism/positivity/self improvement axis is a slippery slope.

TED is basically just an extension of the whole self-help continuum. This TED talk really creeped me out: http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

At the end, Bill Gates comes out and christens this guy the future of education.

And then I went and viewed one of his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69rDtSpshAw

And it was horrible. You get the feeling that Gates and Reese the rest of the education reform crowd watched What the #$*! Do We Know and were all like get the unions out of our way and let us unleash our mind powers on the kids. Here are truckloads of money. Clear your Thetans, educators!

The half-cocked shit these guys say in public totally reminds me of the whole who moved my cheese Tony Robbins realistate scam bullshit. You can hear the whole crowd laugh in that video above when that guy snidely remarks that (omg) the teachers were actually willing to work with him instead of being a bunch of wet blankets (as usual) about his mind-bending youtube breakthrough.

I always get a creepy asexual vibe from a lot of this stuff

Is there a sex component? Are these people going at it like rabbits? Does the self-help spiritual aesthetic justify free love?

Can I get at it?

elephant in the room^

^ otm, this has got to be a sex thing

xxx-post

Yeah I get pissed off any time someone is like "whooa, the existing system wouldn't let us affect REAL CHANGE" because I'm in a technical work field in a corporation and any time we say "uh I don't think you want to spend your dollars making a mobile app for every possible platform and this is not secure" the businesspeople are like "YOU'RE AGAINST AFFECTING REAL CHANGE" and then they hire consultants to throw together halfassed shit we'll have to support and eventually rework to the tune of a bazillion dollars

omg those silva videos. breathing is good for your brain, what an insight

i have zero evidence to support this theory but i am of the belief that Vishen fucks no less than 6 different women at each Awesomeness Fest.

just look @ the "pirate party" YouTube in my OP again, then listen to him go on about how they need to decide if Awesomeness Fest and you are "a good fit"

It's either like, do things a completely structured way like THE MAN WANTS or go to a third-party completely outside the company.

Kind of like working in the SYSTEM for the MAN or finding your guru out there. Only you already pay a bunch of people who have the guru ideas but ignore them.

Vishen is my guru now

also I died at brain tapping

p. sure that any made-up physiospiritual exercise can gain some traction with people as long as you ask them to concentrate on their breathing in the process, since you know breathing deeply feels nice.

"OK now exhale as you put your other hand into the bowl of Jell-O and visualize yourself on a jetski."

The first thing a friend said when I sent him the link to this thread was:

whoa this mindvalley thing is fucking with me
look, I know it's bullshit, but all i see is a room full of hot chicks

re: sex thing

Take another look at that group photo of the MindValley in Kuala Lumpur. Even if they are not humping like rabbits, the allure of attractive toothy youth so thick you have to wave away the fumes to keep a level head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn2LndCLcNk

some sad canadians :/

This thread has destroyed my productivity.

lol i just looked at the mindie kniss website, and for real took a second to realize this was not a will farrell character:

http://restartyourheart.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/rollin_mccraty1.jpg

my theory: i think a lot of this stuff is built to address the fact that the world is an incredibly complicated place with incredibly complex systems that are overwhelming. like, how does the economy work? how do hedge funds work? how does property get bought, sold? how does energy get made, distributed, refined, etc? like thousands of these questions that directly impact our day to day lives that are completely obscure to 99% of human beings. at best we work in an industry and learn about our industry and have some insight into this tiny piece of the puzzle. i get the feeling that a lot of these ppl don't even have experience with a tiny sliver of how things work. So they have a revelation that stuff must happen, not because of negotiations and relationships and developing actual technology, but by some magical force of mystical will, that if you dream if you can make it, etc. of course, this revelation isn't actually true and doesn't qualify them to actually do anything but continue to talk about, teach, attend seminars about mystical will power, etc. and shit is just getting more complex. and the more complex it gets, the more we're gonna see stuff like this.

and maybe that's not so bad bc if robots replace all of our factory jobs we need to have all these young ppl do something, and if they're gathering in bright rooms to talk about how energized they are, and unleashing the potential of the human body, then they're not idk breaking things. which, like, i think is the fundamental tension. it's hard to stay positive when there's so much shit in the world, so as humans we've developed an industry focused on staying positive. (nb this trend bodes poorly for political revolution.)

how is babby formed?

So they have a revelation that stuff must happen, not because of negotiations and relationships and developing actual technology, but by some magical force of mystical will, that if you dream if you can make it, etc.

To be fair, you just described the basis of a fairly large portion of historical religious thought

tldr it's all about alienation

O! Brave new world that has such people in't.

i'm kinda sympathetic. there's a huge stench of desperation coming off a lot of the ppl being to linked to in this thread

lol TED talks...there are some great ones on there, but occasionally i'll start watching one someone has linked too and it's a little o_O

great post, Mordy. thanks.

and by "thanks" i mean "Namaste"

when there was talk of hotels upthread and beach parties in the evenings for these things, it makes me wonder...

gr8080, have you worked one of these things?

like i was saying, "some of it seriously home-made and sorry-ass looking. you wonder who could be awed by any of it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyubQ56usII

unbelievable

http://www.webtvwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/quantum-leap.jpg

xxpost: not really.

i've had to do a little bit of work w/ rich dad poor dad seminars and other "wealth building" and "EZ Trading" seminars... its funny tho because for as much wealth as they all build they are pretty reliably some of my cheapest clients.

on the other side of this (ie: the cult side that is not contemporary at all but historical) the book When Prophesy Fails is classic sociological text about why ppl believe crazy shit

Magical thinking is pretty common. It's like a shortcut in our brains that's very hackable.

i have zero evidence to support this theory but i am of the belief that Vishen fucks no less than 6 different women at each Awesomeness Fest.

just look @ the "pirate party" YouTube in my OP again, then listen to him go on about how they need to decide if Awesomeness Fest and you are "a good fit"

― ⚓ (gr8080), Thursday, February 2, 2012 1:36 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and all the dudes look so schlubby and dippy...

all right this sorta o/t now, on the alien culty end, but wtf

http://www.youtube.com/user/Komurosan

1937 uploads!

(i wonder if that's the source of that one sample on the death grips record?)

rich dad poor dad

uuurggh

Magical thinking is pretty common. It's like a shortcut in our brains that's very hackable.

― Unleash the Chang (he did what!) (Austerity Ponies), Thursday, February 2, 2012 2:58 PM

http://www.kipnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/carlos_castaneda.jpg

loved those books when i was 13

I think I read the Illuminatus Trilogy when I was like 14, that kind of ruined me

1937 uploads!

― Critique of Pure Moods (goole), Thursday, February 2, 2012 10:01 AM (14 minutes ago)

lagoon touched on this earlier, but internet 2.0/social networking is really what brought them out of the wilderness and clothed, bathed, and fed them. now they are reproducing at an alarming rate and breaking down the walls.

I just read through this thread and I believe you people are highly naive.

This is not an occult science. This is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology. That stuff's hooey, and you've got to have a screw loose to go in for that sort of thing.

The beliefs of The Silva Method, Mind Valley and yes, even Sam Stephenson's are fairly commonplace and very simple to understand:

Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration.

You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.

I'm out.

Peter

haha I was thinking abt that scene earlier reading this thread

we shd probably mention the libertarian yoga murderer people here

No, ladies and gentlemen, we don't ride around on broomsticks and wear pointy hats. Well, we don't ride on broomsticks.

goole u will be pleased to know that lululemon is all-in on landmark

!

what is lululemon?

http://gawker.com/5859867/lululemon-run-by-ayn-rand+obsessed-ideologue

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/crime-scene/post/jayna-murray-alive-during-322-injuries-prosecutor/2011/11/02/gIQAtVxgfM_blog.html

my ex worked at lululemon and was pretty stoked on how empowering their internal meetings were

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/39e6400823e4f16e5a23045d4a1ca9d8/887525.jpg

^^^This was my favorite album as a v young child