Since it is the end of the year and we’re right before the holidays, I would like to end this year’s set of articles with a three parts article about why it is so important for more people to learn NLP.
So, here we go.
Sometimes in our NLP trainings we mention an ancient method of education called the Trivium Method. Some of our students will remember this segment. This method was first established during Plato’s ancient Greece (as far as we can ascertain) and when learned and applied correctly leads to pure individual critical thinking, creativity and of course by deduction also higher intelligence.
I am very well aware that critical thinking is not only discouraged but frowned upon in our modern times. In Australia for example for many years grammar was not even taught in schools any more until somebody woke up and realized a whole generation of young people had no idea of how to write or even speak in an understandable logical manner. The grammar taught today in the western schools (if any) is pitifully insufficient and many teachers and students alike hate the subject.
For if you [the rulers] suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves [and outlaws] and then punish them.
-Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book 1
The word “Trivium” involves three parts:
- Grammar – and this is concerned with first discovering and then learning to order and sequence words in a sentence – differently said the knowledge of the construction of language. You know those boring things like verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections… This is the basis, the bricks of critical thinking.
- Logic is concerned with developing the ability to reason. Now reasoning allows us to first observe and then utilize valid and invalid relationships among facts. Without this step understanding is confused and accurate logical analysis does not occur; the Complex Equivalents (this is an NLP jargon which means “this equals or equates that”) are false, deductive or inductive links in the reasoning chain are broken, and the final conclusion is usually wrong (if a conclusion is even possible).
- Rhetoric is concerned with the oral and written ability to use language to make an argument, to support a case; the capacity to persuade, even in the face of counter-arguments.
Now let’s look at what we have. We have a general population who mostly hates grammar or is simply unaware of its importance, who does not have any ability to reason logically, and as a result who cannot think its way correctly though a train of thought, but who is talking “expertly” about… pretty much nothing. Have you stopped to pay attention to the average young (and old) people’s conversations? Have you noticed that there is virtually no individual opinion or interesting and original idea? All you hear is pretty much regurgitation of the TV news or the magazine gossip.
That’s sad.
Have you noticed how otherwise very talented individuals, with innate skills and capabilities are unable to put them to work beneficially and end up frustrated in jobs they don’t like, broken relationships, unstable financial situations or precarious health?
Have you noticed how people buy all the crap they don’t need because a bunch of great salesmen or advertising agencies put together beautifully worded ads? Have you noticed how much training is offered for “persuasion”? Just search for the words Influence and Persuasion…. You will find a plethora of “persuasion this“, “persuasion that“? What do you think they teach you? What do you use to sell stuff or convince anybody of anything?
Language!
Yes folks, if you managed to read this article up to this point, congratulations, I am convinced you guessed correctly! The good old language skills! You either have them or well… to put it mildly, you’re being directed by those who do! If you cannot notice your own Internal Representations (this is an NLP jargon I thoroughly explained elsewhere) and how they’re directed by the language you hear, you actually are mind manipulated without your knowledge or consent.
The damage done to people’s minds is substantial, since they really have no ability for logic in their thinking. The “building blocks” necessary for critical thinking (Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric in this order) are missing thus rational analysis of a life-crisis is just not present. Positive and constructive solutions simply do not exist.
What you observe instead is an instinctual emotional response devoid of any critical thinking. People are frozen, they don’t seem to be capable of making decisions without outside input, and what you end up with is a generation who needs to be told at every moment what to do, how to dress, what to eat, and of course what to think. Not how to think, but what to think.
Do you know what that leads to?
It leads to indoctrination. What’s another word for indoctrination? Programming and narrowing of the mind and thinking. Mind stuck in a box. No ability to decide, to know what you want, to find solutions and success. Lack of independence. Co-dependence. No freedom of thought. No individual choice. So what do we do?
The answer will have to wait for Part 2 of this article
Until then, be well