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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Can Self-Responsibility Be Taught?
Wednesday May 23, 2001

If I recall correctly, the so-called “three R’s” did not include responsibility, which was a big mistake. I have no quarrel with readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmatic but what would have been wrong with the “four R’s?” Maybe we would not have so many frivolous lawsuits, so many whiners and nearly as many excuses for not living sensibly and well. This raises a question about whether responsibility can be taught, like the other R’s?

Of course it can be taught. Why not? I’m all for redesigning elementary school curricula, starting today! A friend suggested a course on self-responsibility, probably about third grade (age 8) but I’d start in grade one or, better yet, kindergarten! Self-responsibility courses would not be theoretical—they would address real kiddie-life issues, like responsibility for one’s possessions, responsibility for how others are treated, responsibility for money management and responsibility for effective relationships. Certainly, passing all of these courses (and others) should be mandatory for graduation.

There are, and have long been, isolated efforts to teach responsibility to adults, of course. One of the best organized though faddish initiatives with which I am familiar came along in the late seventies, about the time I was writing my first book as part of my doctoral work. Eager to learn as much as I could, I enrolled in several of these offerings, and was glad I did, for both academic payoffs and personal insights, not to mention pure entertainment. You might have heard about some of these programs, such as the controversial and much maligned (for good reasons) EST, or Erhard Seminars Training.

EST was a New Age mind-over-matter training event that took place over a two and a half-day period (usually on weekends). It was part lecture, part group therapy wherein a hundred or so people were lectured in hotel ballroom settings and helped to get “it.” It was wacky and fun at the same time, and relatively harmless unless, of course, one were a borderline psycho or otherwise on the edge, in which case things could easily get out of hand. Naturally, there were a few well-publicized problems associated with failed expectations or, ironically, unhappy customers who saw no reason to take responsibility for disappointments associated with the training.

Anyway, EST weekends and varied imitation trainings crafted by former EST trainers and others had elements of basic training drill camps, with rituals that delayed potty breaks, entailed sleep deprivation and so on. At the height of EST’s popularity, some writers wondered if the movement would lurch to a halt as registrants developed kidney failure and/or were too tired to leave their houses.

Werner Erhard, the founder of EST (Erhard Seminars Training), was born John Paul Rosenberg in 1935. EST was part of the so-called Human Potential Movement. Erhard made millions on EST--in a little over ten years, he had about 500,000 graduates. As noted, there were plenty of critics, and for good reason. His authoritarian forms of indoctrination worked for the basically well majority of enrollees and even for some troubled folks, but they also created many obsessively driven evangelical acolytes who were unleashed as pitch-persons for the program. “The Forum” replaced EST in 1984. The Forum entailed a series of two ''transformational'' weekends for $625. Erhard always crafted his seminars on a potpourri of concepts, many of which are quite worthwhile, including teaching a foundation ethic of personal responsibility. Unfortunately, the EST seminar was weighed down with flaky practices, cult of the personality nonsense, prophetic “will it and it will happen” silliness, babble about ‘getting it," a search for the free and perfect self and so on. I didn't enroll in EST but understand from friends who did, as well as many articles about it, that the methods used were abusive, profane and demeaning.

“Landmark Forum” was a mellower incarnation that retained the positive message that "you are in charge of your life," as did other related self-responsibility-based seminars. As you might expect, professional therapists were not so happy about some non-credentialed New Age fast-talker taking away business, particularly the one run by a former car and encyclopedia salesman (Erhard). Hey, everybody has to start somewhere--and car and encyclopedia sales are not necessary a dishonorable way to make a living. In any event, a library of articles describing bad encounters with EST can be found in the Abstracts of Articles in Psychological Journals. For an entertaining list of varied tales about EST and its founder, see the web site put up by Rick Ross called “The Forum” at http://www.rickross.com/groups/forum.html. You might also want to read a book about all this entitled Outrageous Betrayal: The Real Story of Werner Erhard from EST to Exile by Steven Pressman. It’s available from Amazon.com.

In any event, I think it would be great if everyone were exposed to basic concepts of personal responsibility long before they became adults—or teenagers, for that matter. It would be even better if they fully realized the life advantages such an ethic provides for a healthy and effective existence.

It’s just so much easier to live well and look on the bright side of life if you are not caught up in looking for excuses, feeling victimized and sorry for yourself. If you are mired in the idea that someone else is to blame, the bright side of things is hard to spot.

Be well.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the PHYSICAL DOMAIN under the skill area of adaptations and challenges. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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