Encyclopedia

A B C D E F G H I J L M N O P R S T U V W

Olfactory

One of the lesser used modalities is the olfactory system. For most people it is too unconscious to be of much use. Nevertheless, given that the olfactory system works so unconsciously when it works, it works really, really well. For that reason it is one of the systems to check if the main modalities, visual, auditory & kinestetic, don’t work as well as wished for.

And what magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses! This nose, for example, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is actually the most delicate instrument so far at our disposal: it is able to detect tiny chemical concentrations that even elude a spectroscope. Today we possess science precisely to the extent to which we have decided to accept the testimony of the senses — to the extent to which we sharpen them further, arm them, and have learned to think them through. The rest is miscarriage and not-yet-science — in other words, metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology — or formal science, a doctrine of signs, such as logic and that applied logic which is called mathematics. In them reality is not encountered at all, not even as a problem — no more than the question of the value of such a sign-convention as logic.

Twilight of the Idols, ‘Reason’ In Philosophy, paragraph 3

Opinion

Any statement that expresses an opinion without stating whose opinion it is, is a lost performative according to NLP and as such a distortion of our communications.

Injustice necessary. – All judgments as to the value of life have evolved illogically and are therefore unjust. The falsity of human judgement derives firstly from the condition of the material to be judged, namely very incomplete, secondly from the way in which the sum is arrived at on the basis of this material, and thirdly from the fact that every individual piece of this material is in tum the outcome of false knowledge, and is so with absolute necessity. Our experience of another person, for example, no matter how close he stands to us, can never be complete, so that we would have a logical right to a total evaluation of him; all evaluations are premature and are bound to be. Finally, the standard by which we measure, our own being, is not an unalterable magnitude, we are subject to moods and fluctuations, and yet we would have to know ourselves as a fixed standard to be able justly to assess the relation between ourself and anything else whatever. Perhaps it would follow from all this that one ought not to judge at all; if only it were possible to live without evaluating, without having aversions and partialities! – for all aversion is dependent on an evaluation, likewise all partiality. A drive to something or away from something divorced from a feeling one is desiring the beneficial or avoiding the harmful, a drive without some kind of knowing evaluation of the worth of its objective, does not exist in man. We are from the very beginning illogical and thus unjust beings and can recognize this: this is one of the greatest and most irresolvable discords of existence.

Human, All Too Human, book 1, paragraph 32

Pain

It is important to make a distinction between pain and bad feelings. In the brain neuroscientists identified two neurological circuits involved with pain. One processes pain data from the body and one is a backup system that can duplicate the data from the body in case the body stops sending this data. If people complain about pains it is a good idea to have them checked out by a doctor first before applying NLP.

Pain teaches us that the location of where the pain  is felt is a projection of the brain. There is the so called rubber hand illusion that shows that the brain is easily tricked into feeling pain (or any other feeling) in a rubber hand rather than in the body.

Pain is something different from pleasure – I mean to say, it is not its opposite. If the essence of pleasure has been accurately described as a feeling of more power (thus as a feeling of differentiation that presupposes comparison), this doesn’t mean the essence of unpleasure has thus been defined. The false oppositions believed in by the common people and consequently by language have always been dangerous shackles for the course of truth. There are even cases where a kind of pleasure is conditioned by a certain rhythmic succession of small unpleasurable stimuli: this leads to a very rapid growth of the feeling of power, the feeling of pleasure. This is the case, e.g., in tickling, including the sexual tickling in the act of coitus: here we see unpleasure working as an ingredient in pleasure. It seems a little resistance is overcome and is immediately followed by another little resistance, which in turn is overcome – this play of resistance and victory most strongly stimulates that overall feeling of surplus, excessive power, that feeling which amounts to the essence of pleasure. – The reverse, an augmentation of the feeling of pain through little interpolated pleasurable stimuli, doesn’t exist: pleasure and pain are, precisely, not the reverse of one another. – Pain is an intellectual process in which a judgement makes itself unmistakeably heard – the judgement ‘harmful’, into which long experience has accumulated. In itself there is no pain. It is not the wound that hurts; it is the experience of what grave consequences a wound can have for the organism as a whole that speaks in the shape of that deep agitation called unpleasure (in the case of harmful influences unknown to earlier men, e.g., from new combinations of toxic chemicals, pain bears no witness – and we are undone …). In pain, the really specific thing is always the long agitation, the after-trembling of a terrifying shock in the cerebral focus of the nervous system: one’s suffering is not actually due to the cause of the pain (some injury, for example) but to the long-lasting upset of equilibrium proceeding from that shock. Pain is a sickness ofthe cerebral nerve centres – whereas pleasure is by no means a sickness …- That pain is the cause of counter-movements may be supported by appearances and even by the prejudice of philosophers; but in sudden cases, if one looks closely, the counter-movement manifestly arrives earlier than the feeling of pain. I’d be in a sorry plight if, having stumbled, I had to wait until the fact struck the bell of consciousness and a hint of what to do was telegraphed back … Instead, I distinguish as clearly as possible that the counter-movement of the foot happens first, to prevent a fall, and then, after a measurable passage of time, a kind of painful wave suddenly makes itself felt in the front of my head. One does not, thus, react to the pain. Pain is afterwards projected into the injured place – but the essence of this local pain is, nevertheless, not the expression of the type of local injury: it’s merely a place-sign, appropriate to the injury in strength and tone, that the nerve centres have received from it. If the organism’s muscular strength drops measurably as a consequence of the shock, this by no means indicates that the essence of pain should be sought in a lessening of the feeling of power … To repeat, one does not react to pain: unpleasure is not a ’cause’ of actions, pain itself is a reaction, the counter-movement is another and earlier reaction – the two things originate in different places.

Notebook 14, spring 1888 paragraph 173

Peak experience

NLP is about having good feelings most of the time rather than peak experiences.

Faith in intoxication. – Men who enjoy moments of exaltation and ecstasy and who, on account of the contrast other states present and because of the way they have squandered their nervous energy, are ordinarily in a wretched and miserable condition, regard these moments as their real ‘self’ and their wretchedness and misery as the effect of what is ‘outside the self’ and thus they harbor feelings of revengefulness towards their environment, their age, their entire world. Intoxication counts as their real life, as their actual ego: they see in everything else the opponent and obstructor of intoxication, no matter whether its nature be spiritual, moral, religious or artistic. Mankind owes much that is bad to these wild inebriates: for they are insatiable sowers of the weeds of dissatisfaction with oneself and one’s neighbor, of contempt for the age and the world, and especially of world-weariness. Perhaps a whole Hell of criminals could not produce an effect so oppressive, poisonous to air and land, uncanny and protracted as does this noble little community of unruly, fantastic, half-crazy people of genius who cannot control themselves and can experience pleasure in themselves only when they have quite lost themselves: while the criminal very often gives proof of exceptional self-control, self-sacrifice and prudence, and keeps these qualities awake in those who fear him. Through him the sky above life may perhaps become perilous and gloomy, but the air stays sharp and invigorating. – In addition to all this, these enthusiasts seek with all their might to implant the faith in intoxication as being that which is actually living in life: a dreadful faith! Just as savages are quickly ruined and then perish through ‘fire-water’, so mankind as a whole has been slowly and thoroughly ruined through the feelings made drunk by spiritual fire-waters and by those who have kept alive the desire for them: perhaps it will go on to perish by them.

Daybreak paragraph 50

Pessimism

NLP often gets confused with positive thinking. NLP is different though. NLP is all about having the freedom to chose what you want. Nevertheless, most people when they have the power to chose, chose good feelings over bad ones for instance. Yet, when NLP is applied correctly it doesn’t want to paint a rosy picture of a fantastic future. No, not at all. It is much better to paint an uncertain future where problems happen, but where you see yourself reacting calmly to trouble and where you see yourself solving any issues that come up.

Mental imagery about the future where you see yourself work as an instruction video for the unconsciousness. If you imagine a future without any problems then your brain doesn’t know how to react in case there are issues in real life. By imagining that things can go wrong and seeing yourself reacting calmly and correctly, solving the problems, then your brain knows what to do if there are issues.

My new path to ‘Yes’ My new version of pessimism: willingly to seek out the dreadful and questionable sides of existence: which made clear to me related phenomena of the past. ‘How much “truth” can a spirit endure and dare?’ – a question of its strength. The outcome of a pessimism like this could be that form of a Dionysian saying Yes to the world as it is, to the point of wishing for its absolute recurrence and eternity: which would mean a new ideal of philosophy and sensibility. Understanding that those aspects of existence previously negated are not only necessary, but also desirable; and desirable not merely with respect to the aspects which have previously been affirmed (perhaps as their complement and precondition) but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more fruitful, truer aspects of existence, in which the will of existence expresses itself more clearly. To devalue those aspects of existence that have previously been the only ones affirmed; to draw out what it is that actually says Yes here (first the instinct of those who suffer, second the instinct of the herd, and that third instinct, the instinct of the majority against the exception). Conception of a higher kind of being as ‘immoral’ according to existing ideas: the beginnings of this in history (the pagan gods, the ideals of the Renaissance).

Notebook 10, autumn 1887 paragraph 3

 

Plan

One of the more important techniques within NLP is working with time lines. With time lines the most important thing you can do, is creating the thirty year plan. The thirty year plan gives direction to life and calms the unconsciousness. If you don’t update your thirty year plan when you change your life then old ideas from your past will still be part of the direction you are going.

Our evaluations. – All actions may be traced back to evaluations, all evaluations are either original or adopted – the latter being by far the most common. Why do we adopt them? From fear- that is to say, we consider it more advisable to pretend they are our own – and accustom ourself to this pretence, so that at length it becomes our own nature. Original evaluation: that is to say, to assess a thing according to the extent to which it pleases or displeases us alone and no one else – something excessively rare! – But must our evaluation of another, in which there lies the motive for our generally availing ourselves of his evaluation, at least not proceed from us, be our own determination? Yes, but we arrive at it as children, and rarely learn to change our view; most of us are our whole lives long the fools of the way we acquired in childhood of judging our neighbors (their minds, rank, morality, whether they are exemplary or reprehensible) and of finding it necessary to pay homage to their evaluations.

Daybreak paragraph 104

 

Positive intention

One of the most common mistakes about NLP is made in regard to the NLP presupposition that “There is a positive intention motivating every behavior; and a context in which every behavior has value.”, most commonly described as “every action has a positive intention”. The wrong interpretation here is that most people ascribe to the idea of a “positive intention” that said intention is an intention for the good, or even worse the greater good of society.

Of course in most cases there is nothing like this intention for the greater good. Most positive intentions people have, are egoistical intention that only further their own agenda. Positive here means that people’s actions are motivated by what they want rather than what they don’t want. The context in which people’s action have a value often is only the context of what the person involved wants for himself. To be blind for this is a mistake.

‘Man’s actions are always good.’ – We do not accuse nature of immorality when it sends us a thunderstorm and makes us wet: why do we call the harmful man immoral? Because in the latter case we assume a voluntarily commanding free will, in the former necessity. But this distinction is an error. And than: we do not call even intentional harming immoral under all circumstances; one unhesitatingly kills a fly intentionally, for example, merely because one does not like its buzzing, one punishes the criminal intentionally and does him harm so as to protect ourselves and society. In the first instance it is the individual who, to preserve himself or even merely to avoid displeasure, intentionally does harm; in the second it is the state. All morality allows the intentional causing of harm in the case of self-defense: that is, when it is a matter of self-preservation. But these two points of view suffice to explain all evil acts perpetrated by men against men: one desires pleasure or to ward off displeasure; it is always in some sense a matter of self-preservation. Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does he always does the good, that is to say: that which seems to him good (useful) according to the relative degree of his intellect, the measure of his rationality.

Human, All Too Human, book 1, paragraph 102

There is something in the morality of Plato which does not really belong to Plato, but which only appears in his philosophy, one might say, in spite of him: namely, Socratism, for which he himself was too noble. “No one desire to injure himself, hence all evil is done unwittingly. The evil man inflicts injury on himself; he would not do so, however, if he knew that evil is evil. The evil man, therefore, is only evil through error; if one free him from error one will necessarily make him — good.” — This mode of reasoning stinks of the rabble, who perceive only the unpleasant consequences of evil-doing, and practically judge that “it is stupid to do wrong”; while they accept “good” as identical with “useful and pleasant,” without further thought. If you start off with the assumption that this is the origin of every system of utilitarianism, and then follow the scent: one will seldom err. — Plato did all he could to interpret something refined and noble into the tenets of his teacher, and above all to interpret himself into them — he, the most daring of all interpreters, who lifted the entire Socrates out of the street, as a popular theme and song, to exhibit him in endless and impossible modifications — namely, in all his own disguises and multiplicities. In jest, and in Homeric language as well, what is the Platonic Socrates, if not — “Plato at the front, Plato at the back, Chimaera in the middle.”

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 190

Wickedness is rare. – Most people are much too much occupied with themselves to be wicked.

Human, All Too Human, Part 1, paragraph 85

Praise

NLP practitioners often praise others. Sometimes they think that praise is positive feedback. But there is no positive feedback, as all feedback is negative. One can present feedback through strategies that combine negative feedback with praise. For instance in the hamburger method of feedback or two stars and a wish.

What is praising? Praise and gratitude on the occasions of harvest, good weather, victory, weddings, peace – all these festivals require a subject towards which the feeling is discharged. One wants everything good that happens to one to have been done to one, one wants the doer. The same contemplating a work of art: the piece itself is not enough, its maker is praised. – What, then, is praising? A kind of settling up in respect of benefits received, a giving in return, a demonstration of our power – for the praiser affirms, judges, estimates, passes sentence: he grants himself the right to be able to affirm, to be able to mete out honor … The heightened feeling of happiness and life is also a heightened feeling of power: it is out of this that man praises (- out of this he invents and seeks a doer, a ‘subject’ -) Gratitude as the good revenge, most strictly required and practiced where equality and pride must both be maintained, where revenge is practiced best.

Notebook 9, autumn 1887 paragraph 79

In Applause. — In applause there is always some kind of noise: even in self-applause.

Gay Science paragraph 201

Against those who praise. — A : “One is only praised by one’s equals!” B : “Yes! And he who praises says : “You are my equal!”

Gay Science paragraph 190

Process

One of the basic NLP presuppositions is: “The ability to change the process by which we experience reality is more often valuable than changing the content of our experience of reality.”

And be beware of NLP practitioners who tell you to “trust the process”. In reality they are clueless about what is happening and they sense the risk that you are about to get hurt.

The twofold struggle against an ill. – When we are assailed by an ill we can dispose of it either by getting rid of its cause or by changing the effect it produces on our sensibilities: that is to say by reinterpreting the ill into a good whose good effects will perhaps be perceptible only later. Religion and art (and metaphysical philosophy too) endeavor to bring about a change of sensibility, partly through changing our judgment as to the nature of our experiences (for example with the aid of the proposition: ‘whom God loveth he chastiseth’), partly through awakening the ability to take pleasure in pain, in emotion in general (from which the art of tragedy takes its starting-point). The more a man inclines towards reinterpretation, the less attention he will give to the cause of the ill and to doing away with it; the momentary amelioration and narcoticizing, such as is normally employed for example in a case of toothache, suffices him in the case of more serious sufferings too. The more the domination of the religions and all the arts of narcosis declines, the stricter attention men pay to the actual abolition of the ill: which is, to be sure, a bad lookout for the writers of tragedies – for there is less and less material for tragedy, because the realm of inexorable, implacable destiny is growing narrower and narrower – but an even worse one for the priests: for these have hitherto lived on the narcoticizing of human ills.

Human, All Too Human book 1, paragraph 108

Psychiatry

One of the central ideas within NLP is that someone who has problems is not ill, doesn’t have a mental disorder and isn’t broken. For that reason he doesn’t need to be cured, healed or fixed. In most cases what is at issue is that someone hasn’t learned yet how to deal happily with difficult circumstances.

Physicians of the Soul and Pain. — All preachers of morality, as also all theologians, have a bad habit in common: all of them try to persuade man that he is very ill, and that a severe, final, radical cure is necessary. And because mankind as a whole has for centuries listened too eagerly to those teachers, something of the superstition that the human race is in a very bad way has actually come over men : so that they are now far too ready to sigh ; they find nothing more in life and make melancholy faces at each other, as if life were indeed very hard to endure. In truth, they are inordinately assured of their life and in love with it, and full of untold intrigues and subtleties for suppressing everything disagreeable, and for extracting the thorn from pain and misfortune. It seems to me that people always speak with exaggeration about pain and misfortune, as if it were a matter of good behaviour to exaggerate here: on the other hand people are intentionally silent in regard to the number of expedients for alleviating pain; as for instance, the deadening of it, feverish flurry of thought, a peaceful position, or good and bad reminiscences, intentions, and hopes, — also many kinds of pride and fellow-feeling, which have almost the effect of anaesthetics: while in the greatest degree of pain fainting takes place of itself. We understand very well how to pour sweetness on our bitterness, especially on the bitterness of our soul; we find a remedy in our bravery and sublimity, as well as in the nobler delirium of submission and resignation. A loss scarcely remains a loss for an hour: in some way or other a gift from heaven has always fallen into our lap at the same moment — a new form of strength, for example: be it but a new opportunity for the exercise of strength! What have the preachers of morality not dreamt concerning the inner “misery” of evil men! What lies have they not told us about the misfortunes of impassioned men! Yes, lying is here the right word: they were only too well aware of the overflowing happiness of this kind of man, but they kept silent as death about it; because it was a refutation of their theory, according to which happiness only originates through the annihilation of the passions and the silencing of the will ! And finally, as regards the recipe of all those physicians of the soul and their recommendation of a severe radical cure, we may be allowed to ask: Is our life really painful and burdensome enough for us to exchange it with advantage for a Stoical mode of living, and Stoical petrification ? We do not feel sufficiently miserable to have to feel ill in the Stoical fashion!

Gay Science paragraph 326