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

I read a book that synthesized the origins of est/Synanon/Landmark/etc and how those philosophies/organizations lead to a lot of those teen death camps (my term for them) where "troubled kids" whose parents have a lot of money send them to an island or the woods or whatever to be "straightened out." This book was interesting for a lot of reasons, but seeing the development of that seed of an idea that lead to a lot of the weirder and more aggro incarnations of expensive/dubious self-help was my favorite part. The book is Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids.

― I'm trying to think of all the ways I can inspire you (Abbbottt), Thursday, February 2, 2012 9:24 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

its cool how theres literally a gigantic Child Torture Industry where parents sign over a percentage of their guardianship to overseas schools where they can get away with treating "troubled" kids like they're in a russian prison while the one guy on staff who writes english well enough to impersonate them writes fake leters to your parents saying how awesome it is there. and its even cooler that its insanely well documented and still most americans are either indifferent, ignorant or openly approve of it

yeah it's like extraordinary rendition for teens

love the "whoa!" when he says how many people he's performed in front of @ 4:15

fyi i discovered Bashar via the latest (quite sublime) episode of:

High Maintenance - Very good web-series. Discuss.

recommended to all fans of this thread:

http://vimeo.com/79948720

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7oauQt8Y-U#t=2

haha fuck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7oauQt8Y-U#t=2

Mom has a new guru. Thomas Hubl. His facebook page makes me facepalm unfortunately but hey my mom has always been into this stuff.

After finishing grad school I've been tentatively dipping my toe into applying for jobs in the "real world" outside of academia, and it seems like the entire world is like the people mocked in this thread! I don't understand how anyone in the private sector can get any real work accomplished through all the buzz words and double talk. It seems plain that it's a result of a whole class of managers and HR people who literally serve no useful purpose at all, but have insinuated themselves as parasites on the corporate system.

I know none of that is new or insightful, but I had always assumed that all that Office Space / Dilbert stuff was parody and exaggeration, but it seems that if anything it's understated!

Just the entire concept of "leadership" is such a transparent scam.

Thomas Hübl is a contemporary spiritual teacher, who practices mysticism in his own life, and also imparts it to others, in a manner that is entirely in keeping with the times. His work integrates the essence of the great traditions of wisdom with scientific knowledge and his own personal experience. His work, which he executes with uncompromising clarity, leads to the birth of new 'we-cultures'. He has the special gift of truly understanding people and being able to apply the timeless knowledge that has been revealed to him when engaging with them enabling people to gain a deeper dimension of self-awareness and responsibility.
This radical transcendence of the ego-centric world view opens the door to a depth of authentic expression, to service to the world, and to a focus on the absolute.
Thomas Hübl has devoted his life to the task of exploring awareness and supporting others in their quest for greater awareness. His work has world-wide resonance

my mom gets visibly irritated when I refer to him as a guru. "He's a teacher!"

eh it's her life

Xp Yeh in corpland looking the part and telling everyone how awesome you are is a big part of the job. It stings for a while but that's just your pride fucking with you. I'm not very good at this bit of my job, is must be said.

caity weaver, ladies & gents:

http://gawker.com/this-mans-gaze-is-harmful-to-pregnant-women-1595615723

I've been pronouncing his name wrong all this time.

*stares at u*

http://i.imgur.com/LWTvtp7.png

Wow, that's almost crippling stupid, including the bits where he goes on about teaching his kid all religions.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/consciousness-engineering/review/prweb12164279.htm

Mindvalley founder Vishen Lakhiani reveals his brand new Consciousness Engineering masterclass that uncovers the unique method for unleashing our potential. This masterclass exposes the secrets of how to “hack” into one’s mindset and transform their life to enjoy more abundance, success, better relationships & more.

...

During this one hour masterclass, viewers will learn the secrets to “Hacking” human potential. They will experience and realize the things that empower them to change beliefs, habits and results. Vishen will uncover the secrets of “hacking” reality where viewers will learn how to upgrade their lives to enjoy more abundance, success, better relationships & more. They will discover the simple shift in mindset which helped Vishen’s income explode 400% in just one year – and how viewers can effortlessly apply this secret in their own life. Viewers will also learn about beliefs and a simple way to create a new mindset by “installing” new, empowering beliefs… which one chooses. Learn how one simple shift can change expectations from negative to positive and how to smash the illusions that holds one back from achieving the most out of life.
“His knowledge base and his ability to present it clearly and to actually put it into practice is above anyone I have ever seen in this field. I am very excited and glad to recommend his work”, says Jack Canfield - Co-Author of the New York Times Best Selling Chicken Soup for the Soul Series

my god

It'd be a neat study to track the different framings that hucksters have used to hawk their gnosis over the decades.

I doubt that each would use as many scare quotes, tho

The crazy thing about all this is that it all just bottoms out at affiliate marketing and pyramid schemes.

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20141008-wooing-reluctant-relocators

author uses "online education company" in the first sentence and then never once attempts to explain wtf MindValley actually does to generate $20m in revenue annually

haha bad reporting

"juicy genius"

http://www.embodimentexperience.com/

my favorite cult leader/talk radio host back in the news http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/23/the-godfather-of-right-wing-radio.html"> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/23/the-godfather-of-right-wing-radio.html

roy masters was the weirdest thing ever on talk radio, seguing from spooky hypnotizing-his-listeners sermons into all-out rants where he'd "advise" callers that they were consumed by anger and then get start yelling and hang up em

Roy Masters also had a relationship with Sean Hannity. The talk radio phenom and Fox News staple has identified himself as a longtime listener of the TRN patriarch. In 2011, Hannity invited Roy on his radio show to promote Roy’s book The Hypnotic States of Americans. At the beginning of the interview, Hannity told Roy, “I first heard you on the radio, it had to be, in either the late 70s or 80s. On WMCA in New York. You did a weekend program that used to scare the living daylights out of us.”

oh man I laid awake listening to this shit on sunday nights. me and sean hannity, jeez

By 1993, Masters had expanded KOPE-FM into a 24/7 national operation called Talk Radio Network (TRN). “Roy couldn’t be put on any commercial stations because he was too crazy,” Fredinburg says, “so he wanted to create a network that could carry good programming with the goal of syndicating Roy Masters’ lunacy out into the world."

mission accomplished

The most recent This American Life has an interesting segment on "Wake Up Now," which is one of those network marketing cults - http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/543/wake-up-now

i heard that -- it was really depressing
they are exploiting educational inequality and manipulating people and it makes me really mad

Me, too.

The bright side, I guess, is that the guy they talked to at the end had stopped paying money into it and had gone back to work a real job. Although I liked his partner's attitude about the whole thing, that she was just glad to have a stay at home dad to handle the housework while she worked full time.

One thing that stood out to me as particularly insightful was the guy at the end's justification for continuing to take part in Wake Up Now despite the statistics that pretty much nobody actually made a profit from it. He said that he was glad that not everybody made a profit because it showed that only people who worked hard and had the right attitude or drive or whatever would succeed. Because he knew he was willing to work hard, he knew that he would be in the minuscule minority of profit makers. It was just a great example of a certain mindset that humans bring to so many unlikely things (winning the lottery, dieting, any money making endeavor) - like knowing full well that nobody really succeeds at the thing and using that as proof that you will succeed because you are special. It's kind of depressing but kind of impressive, too, this human capacity for optimistic self-delusion.

Yeah but I see the delusion more clearly than I see the optimism. And where did that delusion come from? People who intentionally exploit other people based on their lack of critical thinking skills are a special kind of horrible people imo.

I'd like to hang out with these people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd791x1gIxw

shroiyogishoes

http://socialtriggers.com/

is the sales pitch here "You, too, want ugly suits and giant watches"?

it is like he literally used the template from this

http://tiffzhang.com/startup/index.html?s=818164298310

putting this here because i'm convinced it's related

http://gizmodo.com/some-slimy-clickbait-dickhead-stole-my-identity-to-blog-1717040176

this has to be the base-level engine keeping the rest of this crap afloat, right?

Much-needed warning for pregnant women

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpPOIoBCcAEpvi1.jpg

That's weird.

Anyone heard of Isagenix? Seems to be tied in with this whole scene.

i dunno but i'm in their periscope now so i'll report my findings

the crowd is "woo"ing about how excited they are

Yeah some annual gathering is happening in San Diego.

the guy told them a phrase to say at each other and now the whole crowd is peas-n-carrots-ing each other. It sounds like madness.

The crowd is riveted by this donkey parable.

Anyone heard of Isagenix? Seems to be tied in with this whole scene.

http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/mindvalleys-fundraising-aiming-for-acceleration-and-ipo-in-four-years-13804/

i am so glad to see at least on discussion of this on the web. and a good discussion it is. An acquaintance who is pretty much a total flake told me about this 2 years ago and upon looking at the site and reading everything i came away 1) even less informed about what exactly this was and 2) no clue on cost. Not that i was remotely considering this any way. Seriously any one that thinks they are "Awesome, genius, game changer" or what ever other quasi-business/intelligent euphemistic bullshit they want to attach to themselves is inherently not awesome at all. They are an asshole.
So just seems like another scam aimed squarely at those who think they are profound searchers. Easy marks for sure.

"IIRC one of the two speakers was trying to get us to learn about "optimizing teamwork" based on lessons from ... wait for it... people who "successfully" survived the holocaust."
holy shit! that's fucked but comic gold.

"how did your family survive the holocaust?"
"OPTIMALLY"

http://i.imgur.com/sZoNWBm.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th7BZXXbWV4