Replying to LO25184 --
Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Dressler <winfried.dressler@Voith.de> writes:
>Dear At,
>
>>Well, NLP (Neuro - Lingusitic Programming) is one of
>>those typical three-legged options claimed to cover
>>complexity.
>
>I cannot follow this assessment of NLP. What are the
>three legs ('three and three only properties')?
Greetings Winfried,
The "neuro" refers to the incorporation of psychology, the "linguistic" to
language and especially semantical studies in it and the "programming" to
imperative control structures.
>On the contrary it could be a worthwhile exercise to map
>NLP with your creative learning. I would not be surprised
>if a wise master of NLP comes close to a midwife in
>creative learning in your sense.
Yes, it is possible and thus may be beneficial to help people to become
more creative.
But consider, for example, the frequently quoted saying of NLP "The truth
is what you want it to be". The task of psychology is to trace with what
the mind can come up with, among other things even what the mind can come
up with respect to truth. Here is an example. "The dog has bitten me
because a sorcerer has bewitched the dog." The person in who this saying
have manifested may self have wanted it to be the truth for some or other
reason. The psychologist may also try to trace the reasons for such a
becoming of the truth.
However, psychology alone cannot trace the evolution of truth, nor how to
optimise this evolution in a constructive manner. Logic can offer us
another viewpoint, but even logic is not sufficient. Logic, for example,
can show that this inference results from a certain assumption of faith.
But logic cannot question these assumptions of faith without questioning
its own assumptions too. And first in line is its assumption of LEM to
hold. The same goes for any other discipline now known, especially
science.
As I understand it, "truth" does indeed become created by the human mind.
Some of this "truth" gets articulated by supposedly "true" statements. But
as I further understand truth myself, whatever the "true" statements, once
they have been articulated, I have to scrutinised them further by all
means, weeding out false statements by using the discipline appropiate at
that stage.
>For example, NLP is about mental creations and full in
>line with the tenet 'to learn is to create'. These creations
>have to be done by the client self spontanously.
If this "spontaneous mental creations by the client" is indeed a founding
principle of NLP, then I have studied NLP too superficially in the past.
Furthermore, those employing NLP strategies in their writings (even though
they are surprisingly many, they very seldom warn their readers what they
are doing), seem to be oblivious of this principle too.
Consider the saying above "The truth is what you want it to be." It does
promote a spontaneous creation of the "truth". But by leaving out
"Scrutinise the truth which you have created by also using A, B, C, etc",
it does not promote the evolution of "truth" into eventually TRUTH.
Part of the truth, suppressing the other part of truth which has already
evolved, is not truth because the evolving truth has wholeness.
>The NLP-midwife guides these creations by a series of
>commands. It is very important that the NLP-midwife
>does not get involved into the specific content the client
>is working on. He makes sure that the form of the
>process allows the client to arrive at constructive creations.
This is an appraoch which Carl Rogers followed in pshychology and
psychiatry. I have much more admiration for it than the appraoch which
Freud used.
>NLP is also sensitive about irreversibilty - an unsuccessful
>session cannot simply be reversed and after a successful
>session the world definitely has changed. Also the tenet
>'entropy production is the primordial cause of any creations'
>is deeply embedded in NLP: Although the NLP-midwife must
>not get involved into the specific content the client is working
>on, he very carefully has to assess the process of entropy
>production by means of calibration and observing the physiology
>of the client. The goal is to reach the 'solution physiology'
>which is nothing but the expression of a new order of being.
It is here where I decidedly differ in perhaps a curious manner, but again
in what has not been said. My task as a "midwife of the mind" ends when
the client is able to do the midwifery self and in spontaneous
organisation with other people and definitely not by following my own
midwifery habituously as the one and only way or as the best way. Nothing
gives me greater joy than to see a student getting finally into "mental
autopoiesis".
However, I find the rest of your explanation of NLP-midwivery in terms of
"entropy production" and "creativity" fascinating.
It shows that once again that a person's prejudice can prevent much
constructive creativity. In my case it is my prejudice of NLP because how
the minds of people (of all labels ;-) were engineered during the era of
apartheid South Africa by the "secret masters", even of apartheid. They
used a carefully worked out strategy which for me resembles NLP very much.
I have to admit and stress it that I have never seen them calling it NLP,
but that I have made this association self. It may be completely wrong.
These "masters" succeeded in controlling the minds of their followers to a
frightful extend. My own "eyes" to this practice were fortunately "opened"
in 1969. But many of my fellow citizins had to wait until after the
dismanteling of apartheid and especially the hearings of the Truth and
Reconcilliation commission for their "eyes to become opened".
>Even the name 'Neuro-Lingusitic Programming' could be
>translated as 'Employ imperative logic and brigde the
>material and mental worlds'.
>
>[Host's Note: "brigde"? Probably "bridge." ..Rick]
This I can understand in terms of the correspondences which you have drawn
above. Thank you.
I can also understand it in terms of my South African experiences. The way
in which these masters "bridged the material and mental worlds' is most
instructive. They called it "Calvinism". John Calvin did not make the same
errror as Descarte by cutting reality into the material and mental worlds
unrelated to each other. He has worked his complex theology carefully out
in his "Institution" of the Christian faith. Unfortunately, he
inadvertedly supplied the "mind masters" with a system which they needed.
How?
As a student I made the foolish error that when "opinion formers" were
telling ("programming") us what Calvinism amounts to, they were telling
the truth. But one reading of Calvin's Institution in 1970 convinced me
that what they were claiming as "Calvinism" and the conclusions which
Calvin self arrived at with careful arguments for anyone one to observe
and scrutinise, were completely different. I began to use in a rather
subversive manner the name "neocalvinism" for their claims. Later on I was
very surprised when other "dissenters" also began to use the name
"neocalvinism".
Anyway, by using the "truths" of "neocalvinism" and "commanding" their
followers for the "sake of God and country" they managed to make many of
them into humanoids (robots), sometimes very efficient and even deadly
"terminators" as the TRC hearings uncovered. It is this efficiency with
which they have succeeded which put my thinking on the relationship
"Efficiency and Emergence" and which I finally managed to articulate in
our LO-dialogue.
Dear Winfried, the following, in conclusion, is important to me and
hopefully to other fellow learners too. But should they believe otherwise
to sustain the authentic mental behaviour, I will respect it.
Because I am a South African with more than 50 years of experiences as
one, I am deeply aware that these very experiences may lead to a distorted
mental engineering just as that of the "masters" which I was fortunate to
shake off. That is why I caution every fellow learner to scrutinise
carefully what I have to say and then, afterwards, follow his/her own
authentic path rather than to stick or defend what I have said.
To scrutinize is not to judge with as little information possible.
>Indeed, throwing the crystal 'creative learning' in the
>precipitate of NLP (for example at the NLP-university,
>recently mentioned here on the list) could considerably
>accelerate the educational paradigm shift needed so
>much. What do you think?
I have explained a number of times the immense danger of any accelerated
creativity. The increased speed is deadly to sustaining the "free energy"
of creativity during all its phases. One cannot sprint and dance too! You
will not believe where I discovered this directive first -- in growing
succulent plants artificially!
What we can do, is to remove as many obstacles preventing the paradigm
shift which lengthens (dilates) the time needed to reach the requisite
complexity. I believe in a Demingian manner, based on my own observations,
that followers self are responsible for 10% of the obstacles/delays while
leaders are responsible for 90% of the rest of the obstacles/delays.
The "radical transformation" of South Africa's educational system since
the fall of apartheid to speed up the level of education of the whole
nation, ought to become a case study of trying to sprint and dance
simultaneously. A paradigm shift can easily become a "paradigm lost" as I
have explained recently in our LO-dialogue. But this study of our
educational system is too complex for this topic.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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