I don't understand why people got so upset. This show airs 2 hours a day, every day, and has years worth of archives, of the exact same format you enjoy. If you really didn't enjoy this ONE NIGHT of changing things up, you just had to wait a day or could play catch up on missed shows or something. Personally, I thought it was a very refreshing change of pace and wouldn't mind seeing a similar change-up of the routine every once in awhile. It was also pretty entertaining to me.
That said, I did feel Ian was throwing the term cult around a bit too readily and was calling pretty simple arguments straight out of philosophy "gobble-dee-gook". "Life is inherently empty and meaningless and is up to you to make your own meaning." is the most basic tenet of existentialism (although perhaps worded a bit differently), one of the most adhered to philosophies in modern times. Even if you didn't encounter it in your public school experience (I did, as well as Objectivism and Libertarianism and a bunch of other ideas, and yes, I'm talking about high school), then you should have run into it several times by now while on the internet. And besides, just because you don't understand them right away at face value doesn't inherently make them bad ideas.
The other main argument made sense also. Bad shit can happen to you, but you don't have to associate a bunch of judgements on your character based on those experiences. (Rape -> I'm ugly, I'm dirty, no man will ever love me, or being Introverted = I'm weak, I'm not like "normal" people, I'll never find a girlfriend, etc). As long as you allow yourself to believe this nonsense about yourself, you will be trapped by those beliefs, and you will be unable to change yourself for the beliefs about yourself will become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Some of it may even be somewhat rational, like my own personal limiting thought that since I'm pretty heavy I'll have a hard time finding a girlfriend because women tend to exclusively want to date, or think they want to date, athletic people, which is reinforced by 95% of the personal ads out there. That doesn't mean I should let it stop me from trying (although I pretty much do, and I shouldn't, but hey, I'm not perfect and let myself be ruled by my emotions more than I should).
That's all Mark was claiming when he was explaining them, although I can even understand the more extreme example you posted, where literally everything only has meaning because you allow it to have meaning. If you're raped, it's only a traumatic experience because you let it become a traumatic experience. Just like if you lose your arms in some tragic accident, it can ruin your life only if you ALLOW it to ruin your life. In the latter case, sure it can mean you're not going to fulfill your dream as a construction worker, but you can still do other things, even things people think they HAVE to have their arms for (like writing, they can switch to dictation and/or voice recognition software instead).
That said, in the example you gave, he was pretty aggressive about it and caused the girl to start bawling into tears, but then again I've seen the same crap happen on television with Dr. Phil, and he's got a Ph.D in clinical psychology. (Not that I'm a fan of this guy, but people still give him their money and their time to hear what he has to say... even I bought one of his books, which seemed to be more about him saying how much the book will change my life than actual advice on how to change my life...I swear the first 100 pages almost are all talking about what the book WILL do for you... I also hate his very chastizing attitude that pervades his written and oral communication)
I also think Landmark program was designed to take advantage of human psychology to make them money as possible, and if Mark thinks they aren't making money hand over fist in these things, he's nuts. There are self made millionaires that became that way solely by giving these sorts of seminars. But there's almost no business that doesn't try to take as much advantage of human psychology as possible. The world of marketing is almost exclusively that, and even game developers like me study psychology to make our games more addictive (just read some stories about how Everquest and World of Warcraft are designed to try to make you spend all your time on it, at the expense of everything else, so they can keep getting your $14 a month from you, and see how many people's relationships and friendships and other crap get destroyed that way). In fact, WoW in particular acts very similarly to this Landmark thing, besides the evangelism being totally voluntary (but people WANT to bring other people in, so they can still spend all their lives in WoW without losing their relationships, since they'll be all doing it together, and it keeps going, and going, and going...) I even knew a guy who was so addicted he even played it at work all day long, as much as he could get away with it, and this was in addition to playing it for 6 hours a night once he got home.
Hell, even I had that problem with Counter-Strike. For a full year and a half I had to play the stupid game for at least 6 hours a day, every day. I stopped dating, I skipped classes sometimes, I skimped on my studying, I'd be late to work constantly. It was a contributing factor to me losing my scholarship and dropping out of college (though there were other factors, like having troubles meeting it's insanely high requirements and being bedridden for a month during a semester I had to have straight A's to keep it). Now, I just have that problem with the internet
.
Personally, I'd never go to the Landmark forum, but I'd also never attend a self-help seminar. I have bought some of the books, though, and I found I'm not the type of person who really benefits from it, since I don't follow through on their instructions and I can't ever believe in a silver bullet, single right way to look at life, the universe, and everything enough to be devoted enough to the ideas to really get anything out of them.
That said, a few that have effected me more than others would be:
Your Money or Your Life (money management.... I now do a couple of these things, like actually examine my expenses, keep track of some things, and make a budget that I always break... hopefully some of it will stick... still it makes the most sense of anything I've read)
The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell - a self-help book written by a philosopher, this is how all self-help books should be: DENSE with ideas and information, not have a single idea they repeat in a million different ways or have exercises to stretch a book to 200+ pages, which is the current trend. It gives you a lot to think about and consider. I just read it this week, though, so I don't know yet how it will affect my life, if it does.
http://www.stevepavlina.com - A self-help guy who gives all his ideas away on his website (he even has a podcast), and makes his money via advertisements on his website and talks he gives (they sound more like lectures that respected industry leaders give, not seminars). I have special interest in this guy because I got to see him transition into what he's become, because he used to be an independent game developer who became an indie game publisher, and wrote his first articles to help game developers overcome their fears and become more productive (they're still up here:
http://www.dexterity.com/articles/) and then decided he was happier (and could make more money) with self-help. He already makes six figures just with effective google ads (amongst others). I consider a lot of his ideas, but I haven't really sat down to act on them. Still, many of his articles are definitely worth reading.
But anyway, it seems to be giving Mark some real tangible benefits (his current wife, for example), so as long as he's not being insane about his level of time and commitment, it's not much more dangerous than any random church out there. Just maybe slightly more expensive (although churches still try to convince you to tithe a full 10% of your income to them, and I know some people who DO that, which has to add up to a lot more than a couple grand over the span of 4 years, like Mark has).