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

Command

The most important language pattern in NLP is from the Miltonmodel the Embedded Command. People nowadays don’t like to be commanded. Nevertheless, the strongest form of suggestion is the command. People unconsciously still want to be led. You embed a command by putting at least one word in front of it. That way you overcome people’s dislike of being commanded while at the same time satisfy their desire to be led.

With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of logical argument. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, argumentative conversation was repudiated in good society: it was considered bad manners, compromising. The young were warned against it. Furthermore, any presentation of one’s motives was distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not have to explain themselves so openly. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the logician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?

Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, paragraph 5

Communication

As NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming it is obvious that communication plays a central role in NLP. In the most basic sense NLP is a way to map human behavior by communicating to someone who does something worth mapping. This map is then tried out by the NLP practitioner and if it works for him is than passed on to other people. Through communication again of course.

The “Genius of the Species” — The problem of consciousness (or more correctly : of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to overtake the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could in fact think, feel, will, and recollect, we could likewise “act” in every sense of the term, and nevertheless nothing of it all need necessarily “come into consciousness” (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without its seeing itself as it were in a mirror : as in fact even at present the far greater part of our life still goes on without this mirroring, — and even our thinking, feeling, volitional life as well, however painful this statement may sound to an older philosopher. What then is the purpose of consciousness generally, when it is in the main superfluous? — Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its perhaps extravagant supposition, that the subtlety and strength of consciousness are always in proportion to the capacity for communication of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication in its turn being in proportion to the necessity for communication: the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself who is master in the art of communicating and making known necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others for his necessities. It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to whole races and successions of generations where necessity and need have long compelled men to communicate with their fellows and understand one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the power and art of communication is at last acquired as if It were a fortune which had gradually accumulated, and now waited for an heir to squander it prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs in like manner the orators, preachers, and authors: all of them men who come at the end of a long succession, “late-born” always, in the best sense of the word, and as has been said, squanderers by their very nature). Granted that this observation is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture that consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure of the necessity for communication – that from the first it has been necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those commanding and those obeying) and has only developed in proportion to its utility. Consciousness is properly only a connecting network between man and man,— it is only as
such that it has had to develop; the recluse and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it. The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come within the range of our consciousness – at least a part of them – is the result of a terrible, prolonged “must” running man’s destiny: as the most endangered animal he needed help and protection; he his fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself understood — and for all this he needed ” consciousness ” first of all : he had to “know” himself what he lacked, to “know” how he felt, and to “know” what he thought. For, to repeat it once more, man, like every living creature, thinks unceasingly, but does not know it; the thinking which is becoming conscious of itself is only the smallest part thereof, we may say, the most superficial part, the worst part: — for this conscious thinking alone is done in words, that is to say, in the symbols for communication, by means of which the origin of consciousness is revealed. In short, the development of speech and the development of consciousness (not of reason, but of reason becoming self-conscious) go hand in hand. Let it be further accepted that it is not only speech that serves as a bridge between man and man, but also the looks, the pressure and the gestures ; our becoming conscious of our sense impressions, our power of being able to fix them, and as it were to locate them outside of ourselves, has increased in proportion as the necessity has increased for communicating them to others by means of signs. The sign-inventing man is at the same time the man who is always more acutely self-conscious; it is only as a social animal that man has learned to become conscious of himself, — he is doing so still, and doing so more and more. — As is obvious, my idea is that consciousness does not properly belong to the individual existence of man, but rather to the social and gregarious nature in him; that, as follows therefrom, it is only in relation to communal and gregarious utility that it is finely developed ; and that consequently each of us, in spite of the best intention of understanding himself as individually as possible, and of “knowing himself”, will always just call into consciousness the non-individual in him, namely, his “averageness” ; — that our thought itself is continuously as it were outvoted by the character of consciousness — by the imperious “genius of the species” therein — and is translated back into the perspective of the herd. Fundamentally our actions are in an incomparable manner altogether personal, unique and absolutely individual — there is no doubt about it; but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they do not appear so any longer. . . . This is the proper phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand it : the nature of animal consciousness involves the notion that the world of which we can become conscious is only a superficial and symbolic world, a generalized and vulgarised world ; — that everything which becomes conscious becomes just thereby shallow, meager, relatively stupid, — a generalization, a symbol, a characteristic of the herd ; that with the evolving of consciousness there is always combined a great, radical perversion, falsification, superficialisation, and generalization. Finally, the growing consciousness is a danger, and whoever lives among the most conscious Europeans knows even that it is a disease. As may be conjectured, it is not the antithesis of subject and object with which I am here concerned : I leave that distinction to the epistemologists who have remained entangled in the toils of grammar (popular metaphysics). It is still less the antithesis of “thing in itself” and phenomenon, for we do not “know” enough to be entitled even to make such a distinction. Indeed, we have not any organ at all for knowings or for “truth”: we “know” (or believe, or fancy) just as much as may be of use in the interest of the human herd, the species ; and even what is here called “usefulness” is ultimately only a belief, a fancy, and perhaps precisely the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be ruined.

Gay Science paragraph 354

Complex Equivalence

The complex equivalence is a language pattern of the metamodel (and due to the reversed metamodel also of the Miltonmodel of course). The complex equivalence is a distortion as it equalizes two things by stating “A = B”. It is important to note that A and B have to be two different “complexes”, i.e. things, activities or processes. If B is a property of A then there is only one complex and for that reason no complex equivalence.

Also it is a mistake to think of complex equivalences as being about “A means B”. Meaning something is quite different than being equal. For instance a specific rain can mean that the rain season has started, yet a single rain storm is quite something different than the rain season.

Complex Equivalences replaces reframing. Rather than accept multiple points of view as reframing does, using Complex Equivalence destroys the point of view you want to get rid of and replaces it with the one you want. You do this by using the formula: A is not a B. A is a C!

Judgment: this is the belief that ‘such and such is the case’. Thus, judgment involves admitting having encountered an identical case: it thus presupposes comparison, with the help of memory. Judgment does not create the appearance of an identical case. Instead, it believes it perceives one; it works on the supposition that identical cases even exist. But what is that function, which must be much older and have been at work much earlier, that levels out and assimilates cases in themselves dissimilar? What is that second function which, on the basis of the first, etc. ‘What arouses the same sensations is the same’: but what is it that make sensations the same, ‘takes’ them as the same? – There could be no judgments at all if a kind of leveling had not first been carried out within the sensations: memory is only possible with a constant underscoring of what has been experienced, has become habit – – Before a judgment can be made, the process of assimilation must already have been completed: thus, here too there is an intellectual activity which does not enter consciousness, as in the case of pain caused by an injury. Probably, all organic functions have their correspondence in inner events, in assimilation, elimination, growth, etc. Essential to start from the body and use it as a guiding thread. It is the far richer phenomenon, and can be observed more distinctly. Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind. ‘However strongly something is believed, that is not a criterion of truth.’ But what is truth? Perhaps a kind of belief which has become a condition of life? In that case, its strength would indeed be a criterion. E.g., regarding causality.

Notebook 40, August – September 1885, paragraph 15

Compliment

Central to NLP strategies is the TOTE model. TOTE stands for Test Operation Test Exit. It is a basic model from cybernetics that shows how to control man and machine. The first Test is to check whether it makes sense to start the Operation (any procedure). The second Test is to check whether the Operation has succeeded in outputting what we want. If not this data is passed back to the Operation. This is called feedback. All feedback is negative in the sense that it notifies the Operation that the output is wrong.

Only when the output is right we get an Exit, i.e. the Operation is done and control is passed on to another Operation. Most people think that there is something called positive feedback. This idea is wrong as all feedback is negative. You can however present feedback more positively by combining it with praise and compliments. Also, sometimes people want to praise good output and have the Exit accompanied with a compliment. There is no need for this, but there is also nothing wrong with it.

It shows both subtle and noble self-control when you reserve your praise (assuming you want to give praise at all) for things you disagree with: – otherwise you would certainly be praising yourself, which offends good taste. Of course, this type of self-control offers people a handy opportunity and excuse for constantly misunderstanding you. In order to allow yourself this real luxury of taste and morality, you cannot live with fools of the spirit; you have to live among people whose misunderstandings and mistakes are subtle, and for that reason still amusing – or else you will have to pay dearly for it! – “He praises me: that’s why he agrees with me” – this asinine inference ruins the better part of life for us hermits, because it brings asses into our neighborhood and friendship.

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 283