Hi All, Sorry I am jumping in this in the middle so to speak, but I have been concentrating on other things in the Discuss and have been busy with work. Another reason is that I have been somewhat reluctant to introduce another way of thinking about thinking in this Discuss but something told me this is a good time ( a little q event?)
I have been teasing this Arioch character for a few days now and today wanted to call his/her bluff by introducing the practice of NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) into the arena. Its practitioners do not really apply theory to what they do, they just find out what works and go with that. In this sense it is very pragmatic and empiricist. The intellectual component they do have is based on transformational grammar. I will quickly explain its origins and hope I do not bore you too much (and if this has already ben discussed somewhere (afterall I have missed loads of Discuss, please ignore) But I do think NLP can assist us to become clearer about the things we are dealing with. It was started by Richard Bandler (a Gestalt therapist). Now, a therapist's job is basically to get people out of their emotional difficulties/ problems etc etc. However, this person appears in his office one day and tells him that he has no problems, no hang-ups, life is quietly going along but he feels he is missing something...there is no excitement (are bells already ringing??). Can Richard help him 'find' this?? Richard is stunned, never has he encountered this before but he goes to work on it. He has a friend who teaches linguistics at some University. Together they develop what is now known world wide as NLP. Its basic tennet then is how to improve one's life, performance, thinking, living. I think its insights, now based on some 30 years practical experience can help us in this discuss. I will give 2 examples of its practical application towards recent posts. It will also give you an idea about how NLP'ers (yes, I am a practitioner) approach 'problems'. Example 1: Krimel says: One cannot "will" to feel happy or sad, or fearful, nor can we wish these emotions away when they occur. An NLP'er will appreciate the dynamic response. No problem. But if the person who has experienced the response wants to get out of it ( eg feeling fearful every time something similar happens that 'caused' the fear reaction in the first place) then NLP will ask (because now we have moved from the pre- intellectual level to the intellectual level): how are you doing this? How are you creating this fearfull response to albeit similar situations but no situation/ experience is the same... so how this same response to something different? ( I am sure you can think of some of your own experiences to make sense of this). I must also add that NLP is not interested in the why question...they prefer to leave that to philosophers! By asking specific questions the NLP'er will ellicit the way through which the person experiences for example "fear". We do this through putting a combination of pictures, sounds, feelings (and smells and tastes if appropriate) together and talking to ourselves about these. Yes, we all talk to ourselves! The specific combination of these result in the response which the person labels "fear". Once you know the combination, i.e, how you do it...you can change it. Example 2 woods: "Depends on what you mean by "intellectual". We each know some intellectual patterns may usurp and change the social level in an immoral way". Andre: "Intellect", and the "intellectual" level have been a bit bothersome over the years (at least that is my understanding of it). Now, I am not sure if this will really resolve something but I hope it will lead to , at least a further clarification of the problem: A NLP'er would say:( based on transformational grammar) you have changed an ongoing event i.e. expressed as a verb) into something fixed, immovable, something out of your control (rather something that controls you!!). You have changed it into a noun!! And this is called a nominalisation. There are many nominalisations and I'll mention just a few here: decision,sensation,emotion,reason, intellect, intellectual,pattern,MoQ. To become clear on which is which use this simple structure: And ongoing.....decision, ( eg I regret my decision) The question then simply becomes : What stops you from re-deciding....") This fits, no problems here...it makes sense.So "the decision" is a nominalisation. Compare this to house, car, bank, tree etc. To put "An ongoing... in front of these (true) nouns doesn't make sense because they are true nouns. This is how you separate them. Recognising a nominalisation simply means that you are restoring, for the person who feels dominated, stuck, halted...a real show-stopper!! such a situation, the persons ongoing experience to the ongoing flow of life from whence the process comes. This sounds SOM but I am suggesting that, maybe, we as budding MoQ' ers can use this same SOM logic to expand itself into MoQ thinking. Is this making sence and is this useful? I will leave you with one more observation ( I have to go outside because a tropical downpour has just begun!!) Pirsig: "Good is a noun. That was it....That was the homer, over the fence...Good as a noun rather than an adjective is all the Metaphysics of Quality is about. ( Lila p418) Andre Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
