Introduction 1 Introduction en route to his office, he suddenly realized that he knew nothing. As he related the incident to his biographer, William Bartley: In 1971, the television debut of All in the Familyy tickled an American public who All the things I had ever heard, and read, and all those hours was also celebrating the successful moon landing, and safe return home, of two of practice, suddenly fell into place. It was so stupidly, Apollo space missions. In the same year, much smaller audiences took note of Igor blindingly simple that I could not believe it. I saw that there Stravinsky’s death and the birth of Calvin Broadus Jr. (aka Snoop Dogg/Lion); a were no hidden meanings, that everything was just the marketing phenomenon was born in Seattle with the opening of the first Star- “ way that it is, and that I was already all right. . . . I realized bucks; Idi Amin ousted Milton Obote to become the dictator of Uganda; and in the that I was not my emotions or thoughts. I was not my new academic field of composition and rhetoric, a movement to elevate the status ideas, my intellect, my perceptions, my beliefs. . . . I was of process began to stir. Meanwhile, in October of that year in a meeting room of simply the space, the creator, the source of all that stuff. I San Francisco’s less-than-swank Jack Tar Hotel, Werner Erhard assembled some experienced Self as Self in a direct, unmediated way. I didn’t two hundred participants for the debut of the est Training. Given this timing for just experience Self; I became Self. Suddenly I held all the the emergence of the est Training, media at the time characterized it as a part of information, the content, in my life in a new way, from a new the human potential movement, but scholar Jonathan Moreno has more recently mode, a new context. . . . I am I am. (Bartley 167–168) called est “the most important cultural event after the human potential movement itself seemed exhausted” (Impromptu Man 247). In other words, an experience of being. The insight Erhard derived from that ex- Infamous for its rigorous ground rules and confrontational methods— perience subsequently became what thousands of estt trainees would spend two elements Erhard says were necessary in the liberated, let-it-all-hang-out, “new weekends and several hundred dollars to “get” for themselves. age” ethos of the time—the est Training (Latin for it is, and an acronym for Erhard Discussing his work later, Erhard addressed the challenge he had confronted in Seminars Training) grew in popularity throughout the 1970s because of the im- attempting to communicate what seemed essentially incommunicable: “You can’t pressive benefits participants reported having received, including better relation- do this in the ordinary sense of communication: I can’t have it and give it to you. But ships and a greater sense of “aliveness.” Trainees experienced being “at cause” I can communicate in a way so that you get an opportunity to realize that you have in the matter of their lives, and having a new sense that their lives could make a it yourself already. Essentially, this is what the est Training was developed to do. It difference in the world. They felt “free to be.” This new sense of responsibility and provides a setting in which this kind of sharing takes place” (Bartley 169). freedom allowed for breakthroughs in communicating with others, and enabled From the outset, the language of est was central to both its pedagogical process them to produce results, both personal and professional, that they would previ- and its public image. A fundamental tenet of the est Training, as well as its succes- ously have seen as unlikely. sor program, The Forum, has been that transformation lives in language, and that At the source of this educational enterprise was an experience Erhard had participants keep the program’s results available in their lives by communicating undergone earlier that year, although he later said it was “not in itself so much an those results with others. At the same time, Erhard’s enterprise has consistently experience, as a shift in the context in which he held all process, including experi- eschewed traditional advertising. The only way people have become aware of his ence” (Bartley 168). In some traditions, such an event mightCOPYRIGHTED be referred to as an w orkMATERIAL has been through hearing about it from their friends, family, or associates. individual’s having undergone enlightenment; Erhard has called it a transformation. The resulting symbiotic relationship—the program survives only when participants He was, at this point in his life, a highly successful sales manager and trainer for a communicate about it with family and friends, and it is through communicating large publishing company. Further, he had devoted much of the previous decade to about it that participants keep the benefits alive in their experience—has served the the rigorous exploration of various systems of enlightenment and personal devel- work well through four decades. By 1985, when the estt Training was discontinued opment, from Zen (the essential one, he says) to the Dale Carnegie course and Mind and replaced by The Forum, word-of-mouth had brought a half-million people to see Dynamics. But one morning in 1971, as he was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge for themselves what this transformation was all about. As of 2019, another 2 million 2 SPEAKING BEING

people have graduated from The Forum, either the four-day Forum of Erhard’s time analysis of his work. His work, he says, is not psychological but ontological: his through 1991, or the current iteration of the course, the three-day Landmark concern is the being of human beings (“Heart of the Matter” 1984). He has also Forum (www.landmarkworldwide.com).1 consistently emphasized that the focus of his work is the development of the lan- Erhard’s influence on the culture has made itself felt in another way as well. guage in which it is articulated. Yet no significant scholarly work dealing either with During the 1970s, when it sometimes seemed that every fifth person in San Francis- Erhard’s language use, or with the nature of an ontological methodology, has been co was an est graduate, you could generally detect that element of the population published, even in the academic fields most likely to be deeply concerned with by their use of the program’s language, which in casual use began to be heard as such matters—rhetoric and writing studies, business management, philosophy, and jargon. Erhard’s use of this terminology, however, was highly purposive, and many communication studies. This book aims to begin to correct that omission. of those words and phrases made their way into the public sphere, some to last- Before proceeding, we offer this statement of authorial stance: The authors ing effect. An example has been the shift in the popular understanding of the term have engaged extensively, both as participants and as scholars, in numerous pro- sharing. Before est, people shared a cookie or a bench in the park; what was shared grams designed by Werner Erhard. The senior author took the estt Training for the was divided, and in the process one’s own share was inevitably diminished. But first time in 1973, and we have each participated a number of times in The Forum, in the est Trainingg, participants shared their experience, and through sharing, that both during Erhard’s tenure in the organization and following his departure. Our experience was augmented. To share, in the world of est, was to communicate in doctoral dissertations (University of Southern California, 1990; University of Arizona, such a way that one’s selff and not merely one’s story was made available, leaving the 2008) consisted of rhetorical and philosophical analyses of The Forum. Based upon other touched rather than merely informed. This meaning of the word, we assert, is this considerable study and experience, our assessment of Erhard’s work is un- now common in our culture. Likewise, the term coaching, borrowed by Erhard from equivocal: we have found this work to be pedagogically effective and intellectually the sports arena in the early eighties to identify the style of his pedagogy, has since significant in all of its historical iterations. Our intention in this book is to stimulate become ubiquitous in the field of management, human resources, and executive its serious consideration by the academic community, as well as by others in the coaching. And the ubiquitous Mastercard catchphrase, “Master the possibilities,” culture at large. was born in the mind of an est graduate for whom the term possibility had acquired It is also important to note that our approach as participant observers has a new level of meaning; however, through overuse in the media, this new level of its limits. To carry out the design of the book, we have precluded a number of meaning has diminished. approaches that readers may wish to see addressed, and we beg those readers to The move to discontinue the Training in 1985 and replace it with The Forum indulge us. Before any significant and critical treatments could be viable, or even arose from Erhard’s perception of a shift in the culture’s way of responding to the possible, from a number of disciplines—including philosophy, communication stud- Training; he wanted to design a course that was responsive to that shift. At this ies, rhetorical criticism, and so on—the phenomenon must be first made available. point, while Erhard’s success during those years had been greeted by considerable We present this book as a way into the phenomenon in question, and consequently, media curiosity, scholarly interest was moderate. Several studies of the est Training we invite members from a range of academic disciplines to enter the conversation attempted to measure its effects using a psychological model; while he considered we are seeking to initiate. such efforts valuable, Erhard has asserted that this approach is inappropriate for Evolution 1 Landmark describes The Landmark Forum as a personal and professional development program, based on the discipline of applied ontology and phenomenology. Erhard created the work in the This is an historical document. It presents an account of one moment—albeit a sig- early 1970s and continued its development until in 1991 Landmark took over its ongoing devel- opment as expressed in The Landmark Forum and other Landmark programs. As of the writing of nificant one—in an ongoing project for the development of human being. The first this book, the material and structure of The Forum have continued to be developed during three iteration of this project, the est Training, was designed to communicate to people decades since the 1989 Forum presented in this book. The Landmark Forum of today (circa 2019) living in the cultural environment of the 1970s. As Erhard saw it, considerable logis- is less time (three days and an evening and each day ends by 10:00 pm), it incorporates the use of PowerPoint displays and videos that enhance the participants’ experience of and access to what is tical rigor was required for the course to achieve its purpose, and thus the format being presented, and there is no use of profanity on the part of the program leaders. included demands for which est soon became notorious, including lengthy sessions Introduction 3 with limited bathroom breaks, a highly confrontational interaction style—with of The Forum conversation as it proceeds, and has been the essential element of the the use of expletives—and the surrender of all wristwatches at the door. These course through all of its terminological variations. demands were modified when The Forum replaced the Training; and in subsequent During the transition to The Forum, Erhard excised many of the est Training’s years, as the communication paradigm of the culture has continued to shift, the more meditative exercises and incorporated into the course a new vocabulary and delivery of The Forum has altered accordingly. redesigned procedures, with the stated intention that participants would have an On the one hand, of course, The Forum conversation inevitably challenges enhanced experience of creating a new realm of possibilityy for themselves and their participants’ familiar way of seeing things. Ontological inquiry—pedagogy such as lives. At about this time, through colleagues, he was introduced to the work of the The Forum, that aims to get beyond mere conceptual knowledge—is of necessity twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Erhard was taken with the rigorous and sometimes uncomfortable. In Martin Heidegger’s words, authentic in- way Heidegger’s thinking reverberated with his own, and he consulted with several quiry into Being always “has the character of doing violence, whether to the claims Heideggerian scholars on the subject. Two of them—Hubert Dreyfus of University of of the everyday interpretation, or to its complacency and tranquillized obviousness” California, Berkeley and Michael E. Zimmerman of Tulane—provided formal assess- (BTT 359). But while the conversation in the current Landmark Forum remains rigor- ments of the estt Training’s effectiveness, and noted its consistencies with elements ous, participants will find a presentation that can for the most part be described as of Heidegger’s thought. When Erhard’s revised technology emerged in The Forum gentler, and more user-friendly, than the one presented in this book. and other redesigned courses, significant Heideggerian terminology was included A further aspect of this difference, of course, has to do with Werner Erhard’s in its rhetorical mix, and Erhard occasionally read passages from Heidegger in his personal style. In his delivery of both the Training and The Forum, Erhard’s com- presentations. munication was edgily playful and relentlessly purposive. He called his approach Most significantly, Erhard saw that Heidegger’s ideas and his own were commu- ruthless compassion; and it included a profound sense of humor and Socratic nicating from the same unspoken realm, and that the specifications of the two vo- irony implicit in the human condition. To communicate the humor as well as the cabularies could be merged to communicate that realm more powerfully: “I learned compassion, he often provoked and insulted participants, using language gener- from Heidegger,” said Erhard, “nuances of what I had been saying that clarified and ally considered inappropriate for such a setting (in a parody of one of his favorite made more potent what was there” (Erhard, interview with authors). epithets, graduates of the Training were sometimes referred to as “estholes”). Yet, as What was there was Erhard’s technology of language for the communication of this book shows, those participants who initially resisted these intrusions inevitably being, and its ability, in both the Training and The Forum, to consistently and pow- got the message. Erhard has related this confrontive aspect of his communication erfully evoke an experience that participants found transformative. The evocation to his 1971 experience of transformation: “On the bridge,” he said, “all of a sudden I of that experience has remained The Forum’s essential element; Erhard’s encounter could be 100% responsible for everything in my life, and at the same time none of it with Heidegger enriched the vocabulary in which he could see into it more pro- had any significance. At that point you are free and fearless” (Erhard, interview with foundly and communicate it more effectively. authors). Erhard’s communication style, and his humor, remain on full display in this book; the authors see them as important and entertaining aspects of the historical account we are presenting here. Technology The form of this study will be comparative analysis: we will demonstrate that the work of Werner Erhard is aligned in significant ways with the philosophy of Martin Erhard Encounters Heidegger Heidegger, and that a comparison of their work illuminates the thinking of both Despite the shift we have cited here in The Forum’s style and tone, a central thesis men. We will show that The Forum’s dialogic form introduces a performative dimen- of this book is that from the first offering of the est Training in 1971, through its sion of Heidegger’s ontological vocabulary in a way that Heidegger himself, working replacement by the Forum in 1985 and its current iteration as the Landmark Forum, within a restrictive academic and political culture, was unable to do. We propose the process at the heart of this pedagogy has retained its transformational that The Forum conversation is ontological rhetoric: purposive speaking that com- dynamic. This dynamic, as we will show, arises in the unspoken ontological realm municates and makes present a context of meaning that, if left unexamined, shapes 4 SPEAKING BEING

and limits our way of being. However, this context of meaning cannot be spoken thesis is that the work of Werner Erhard makes available the ontological domain of directly. It becomes present by virtue of what is said. language, so that the decentering of subjectivity and the reinvention of the self can The dynamic of Erhard’s technology of language responds directly to issues be experienced as possibilities rather than merely considered as theory. raised by Heidegger in his 1954 essay, “The Question Concerning Technology” (Basic We recognize that this pedagogical model is in many ways a radical one, given Writings). Technology’s essence, proposes Heidegger, is its relentless demand that the strength of the assumptions embedded in our tradition; but Heidegger says that all of nature, including human beings, be placed in standing reserve, on call for the an experience with language in the ontological domain always requires “a leap.” uses of technology itself. The way of being evoked by this development (i.e., that we As our educational institutions struggle increasingly to generate an opening for the ourselves function as “calculable material” in a cybernetic system designed to serve human in the face of the advance of the technological, we argue that the situation is ourselves) poses the danger that we may become lost in the profound reflexivity of critical, and that a leap of this kind is in order. that system, and, most fatally, may forget that anything has been lost. Surrender to technology “threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to en- ter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal The Plan of the Book truth” (“QCT” in BWW 333). Such surrender, however, seems inevitable: the technolog- The central text for this book, located in the left and right columns on either page, ical epoch is where we have landed, the only way of being we have been provided, is the combination of two sources: notes taken by the senior author while observing and resistance is as futile as surrender is fatal. a Forum in San Francisco led by Werner Erhard in December 1989, and a transcrip- But Heidegger suggests a middle path, a “comportment toward technology tion of the video of the same four-day event made available to the junior author on which expresses ‘yes’ and at the same time ‘no’” (DTT 54). Further, he proposes that location at Landmark Worldwide’s archives. While the transcript provides compre- “essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must hap- hensive and detailed conversations of the actual 1989 Forum, there are important pen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology, and, on alterations that must be accounted for. First and foremost, all names have been the other, fundamentally different from it” (“QCT” in BW 340). We suggest that Wer- altered except for Werner Erhard, and actual names have been used only for those ner Erhard’s work provides such a realm. It is both a manifestation of the technolog- participants who speak more than once or twice with Erhard or the other two indi- ical epoch and a subversive appropriation of its impulse, a thinking which reaches viduals leading the course (“Kipp” and “Wes”). In addition, some conversations have beyond the technological paradigm by reaching through that paradigm. been edited out, or summarized, for the sake of space. For instance, all discussions dealing with the Six-Day Course, discontinued in 1990, have been removed. Also missing from the transcript is the Evening Session of the 1989 Forum: there was In Academia no extant video recording of that event. However, that omission can be rectified For half a century, postmodern and poststructuralist theories across many disci- for interested readers if they were to attend an evening session of The Landmark plines have theorized a new freedom from the constraints of the Cartesian model Forum, where participants will share their experience of the course for guests they of human being. Human subjectivity has been decentered; the self is no longer themselves have invited. understood as the fixed and self-certain cogito but is open to creative reinvention; We call the text that accompanies the transcript either “sidebars” or “intervals.” language does not merely re-present a preexisting world of objective meanings, but Sidebars occur in the central columns between the far left and right panes that in fact generates the meanings that constitute that world. house the transcript of The Forum, and the intervals occur between sessions of the These theoretical assertions concern being. But their effective communication course, and at the conclusion of each of the four days. In the sidebars and intervals in the universities has been hindered by our epistemologically-based academic are relevant ideas from the thinking of Martin Heidegger. Sometimes the connection tradition, which assumes that the central dynamic of education is knowing. This has between a sidebar and the transcript it accompanies may be apparent; sometimes given rise to a pedagogical model in which the ontological domain must always re- it may be intended obliquely, as a hint at the background. Intervals are more often main merely conceptual, because being is not apprehended by knowing. The book’s oblique in this way due to the focus on Heidegger’s thinking in its wider arcs, for Introduction 5 instance, the central theme of “the forgetting of Being,” which has eight parts. Burke, who, beyond their tireless support, have gathered together a generous read- Our purpose in this book is not to explain The Forum, or Heidegger’s philosophy— ing group. To the group, composed of Allan Cohen, Joe DiMaggio, Bruce Gregory, although there are moments where we do provide analysis—but rather, we primarily Michael C. Jensen, Sigurfreyr Jonasson, David C. Logan, Nicholas Merton, Daniel aim to engage the reader in thinking Erhard’s and Heidegger’s ideas for themselves. Rogerson, Steve Zaffron, and Michael E. Zimmerman—we want you to know our im- For readers who have previously participated in The Forum, we believe the con- measurable joy when we received feedback that could only come from the deepest fluence here of Heidegger’s thinking with Erhard’s will enrich the way those readers appreciation. For granting access to Landmark Worldwide’s archives to allow for the hold their Forum experience. This has been true for the authors, and it is likewise production of an accurate and complete transcript, we thank Harry Rosenberg, Mick consistent with the experience of Werner Erhard, for whom exposure to Heidegger’s Leavitt and Landmark Worldwide staff. To the Wiley team, including Shannon Vargo, thinking provided profound insights (Erhard, interview with authors). We intend that Sally Baker, Peter Knox, Deborah Schindlar, and Jocelyn Kwiatkowski: thank you for this book, in a dialogue with its readers, will evoke such insights. taking a risk on this project—given its untraditional scope, design, and size—and Martin Heidegger once cautioned his students not to focus too closely on the for taking such great care throughout all stages of bringing this book into the world. concepts in his lectures, but rather to follow the “movement of showing” (OTB 2). To Lou Agosta, Jeff Bineham, Richard Doyle, Charles Guignon, Michael J. Hyde, The Forum conversation, we assert, is a carefully designed movement in language and Carolyne White—together with the members of Lecole book club—thank you for the showing of being. In this book, we will show that showing. Our goal—Heide- for reviewing and responding to the early versions of the manuscript; we hope your gger’s, Erhard’s, the authors’—is the unconcealment of a powerful aspect of human thoughtful attention presages serious study of this rich rhetorical phenomenon being with which we are, for the most part, unfamiliar. within such academic fields as rhetoric and writing studies, education, philosophy, While it may go without saying, reading this book will not provide an experience and communication studies. of The Forum. We intend to hint at that experience, and we encourage readers for Last, Bruce and I together stand in ovation to the man who has made, and will whom our hints are provocative to seek out the experience for themselves. The Forum continue to make, the difference for both of us and countless others—the difference occurs essentially as a dialogue; ontological inquiry demands interactive play, and for all those who have had the opportunity, the gift, to be and speak with him—for needs “the widest sphere in which to swing” (“DL” in OWL 27). In written form, Heideg- in the very act of speaking being we create possibility for ourselves and our lives. ger warned, “the movement of the questioning that is called for here might too easily Werner Erhard: Thank you for providing a way to say what otherwise remains congeal” (“DL” in OWL 50). forever unsayable. Nonetheless, as we undertake this project, the authors stand in the open ques- tion: What is the possibility of communicating being? This is not a questioning that seeks an answer; rather, the inquiry it generates persistently reflects the question itself back upon the questioner, undermining comforting and limiting assumptions. Thus we see it as a transformational question. We invite the reader to join us in this inquiry.

Acknowledgments It is impossible to list all those who have contributed significantly to the composi- tion of this book; to do so with full integrity would mean naming all who have risked what it means to hear the unsaid in what is said. In particular, our gratitude goes to several extraordinary individuals without whom our work would have failed to move beyond the planning stages, including first, Barbara Stevenson and Sheryl