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Causality

According to Neuro-Linguistic Programming causality is a distortion of our communications.

The error of imaginary causes. To begin with dreams: a cause is slipped after the fact under a particular sensation (for example, the sensation following a faroff cannon shot) — often a whole little novel is fabricated in which the dreamer appears as the protagonist who experiences the stimulus. The sensation endures meanwhile as a kind of resonance: it waits, so to speak, until the causal interpretation permits it to step into the foreground — not as a random occurrence but as a “meaningful event.” The cannon shot appears in a causal mode, in an apparent reversal of time. What is really later (the causal interpretation) is experienced first — often with a hundred details that pass like lightning before the shot is heard. What has happened? The representations which were produced in reaction to certain stimulus have been misinterpreted as its causes. In fact, we do the same thing when awake. Most of our general feelings — every kind of inhibition, pressure, tension, and impulsion in the ebb and flow of our physiology, and particularly in the state of the nervous system — excites our causal instinct: we want to have a reason for feeling this way or that — for feeling bad or good. We are never satisfied merely to state the fact that we feel this way or that: we admit this fact only — become conscious of it only — when we have fabricated some kind of explanation for it. Memory, which swings into action in such cases without our awareness, brings up earlier states of the same kind, together with the causal interpretations associated with them — not their actual causes. Of course, the faith that such representations or accompanying conscious processes are the causes is also brought forth by memory. Thus originates a habitual acceptance of a particular causal interpretation, which, as a matter of fact, inhibits any investigation into the real cause — it even excludes it.

Twilight of the Idols, The Four Great Errors, paragraph 4

Causation

In NLP causation is considered to be a distortion of our communications because there doesn’t exist such a thing as a cause and effect. For that reason within NLP we don’t look for the root cause of the problem as they would in psychology, but rather make sure that we help people overcome the symptoms of their issues. When you get rid of all the symptoms of the problems then there are no hidden or repressed problems anymore. In fact the person is free of problems.

The error of a false causality. Humans have always believed that they knew what a cause was; but how did we get this knowledge — or more precisely, our faith that we had this knowledge? From the realm of the famous “inner facts,” of which not a single one has so far turned out to be true. We believe that we are the cause of our own will: we think that here at least we can see a cause at work. Nor did we doubt that all the antecedents of our will, its causes, were to be found in our own consciousness or in our personal “motives.” Otherwise, we would not be responsible for what we choose to do. Who would deny that his thoughts have a cause, and that his own mind caused the thoughts? Of these “inward facts” that seem to demonstrate causality, the primary and most persuasive one is that of the will as cause. The idea of consciousness (“spirit”) or, later, that of the ego (the “subject”) as a cause are only afterbirths: first the causality of the will was firmly accepted as proved, as a fact, and these other concepts followed from it. But we have reservations about these concepts. Today we no longer believe any of this is true. The “inner world” is full of phantoms and illusions: the will being one of them. The will no longer moves anything, hence it does not explain anything — it merely accompanies events; it can also be completely absent. The socalled motives: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something shadowing the deed that is more likely to hide the causes of our actions than to reveal them. And as for the ego … that has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words! It has altogether ceased to think, feel, or will! What follows from this? There are no mental causes at all. The whole of the allegedly empirical evidence for mental causes has gone out the window. That is what follows! And what a nice delusion we had perpetrated with this “empirical evidence;” we interpreted the real world as a world of causes, a world of wills, a world of spirits. The most ancient and enduring psychology was at work here: it simply interpreted everything that happened in the world as an act, as the effect of a will; the world was inhabited with a multiplicity of wills; an agent (a “subject”) was slipped under the surface of events. It was out of himself that man projected his three most unquestioned “inner facts” — the will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego; he interpreted “things” as “being” in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Small wonder that later he always found in things what he had already put into them. The thing itself, the concept of thing is a mere extension of the faith in the ego as cause. And even your atom, my dear materialists and physicists — how much error, how much rudimentary psychology still resides in your atom! Not to mention the “thing-in-itself,” the horrendum pudendum of metaphysicians! The “spirit as cause” mistaken for reality! And made the very measure of reality! And called God!

Twilight of the Idols, The Four Great Errors, paragraph 3

Cause

Cause and effect statements are a distortion of our communications according to NLP. In fact there are no cause and effects. Hence claiming that there are causes distorts our communications. So if you want to use your communication for clarification and thus follow the guidelines of the metamodel you need to refrain from the use of cause and effect statements. On the other if you want to use the reversed metamodel as part of the Miltonmodel to influence people than the use of cause and effect is highly recommended. Nevertheless, NLP is only applied correctly when you are able to use cause and effect statements without believing in their truth or existence.

The cause of itself is the best self-contradiction that has ever been conceived, a type of logical rape and abomination. But humanity’s excessive pride has got itself profoundly and horribly entangled with precisely this piece of nonsense. The longing for “freedom of the will” in the superlative metaphysical sense (which, unfortunately, still rules in the heads of the half educated), the longing to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for your actions yourself and to relieve God, world, ancestors, chance, and society of the burden – all this means nothing less than being that very cause of itself and, with a courage greater than Munchhausen’s, pulling yourself by the hair from the swamp of nothingness up into existence. Suppose someone sees through the boorish naivete of this famous concept of “free will” and manages to get it out of his mind; I would then ask him to carry his “enlightenment” a step further and to rid his mind of the reversal of this misconceived concept of “free will”: I mean the “un-free will,” which is basically an abuse of cause and effect. We should not erroneously objectify “cause” and “effect” like the natural scientists do (and whoever else thinks naturalistically these days –) in accordance with the dominant mechanistic stupidity which would have the cause push and shove until it “effects” something; we should use “cause” and “effect” only as pure concepts, which is to say as conventional fictions for the purpose of description and communication, not explanation. In the “in-itself ” there is nothing like “causal association,” “necessity,” or “psychological un-freedom.” There, the “effect” does not follow “from the cause,” there is no rule of “law.” We are the ones who invented causation, succession, for-each-other, relativity, compulsion, numbers, law, freedom, grounds, purpose; and if we project and inscribe this symbol world onto things as an “in-itself,” then this is the way we have always done things, namely mythologically. The “un-free will” is mythology; in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills. It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in a thinker when he senses some compulsion, need, having-to-follow, pressure, unfreedom in every “causal connection” and “psychological necessity.” It is very telling to feel this way – the person tells on himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, “un-freedom of the will” is regarded as a problem by two completely opposed parties, but always in a profoundly personal manner. The one party would never dream of relinquishing their “responsibility,” a belief in themselves, a personal right to their own merit (the vain races belong to this group –). Those in the other party, on the contrary, do not want to be responsible for anything or to be guilty of anything; driven by an inner self-contempt, they long to be able to shift the blame for themselves to something else. When they write books these days, this latter group tends to side with the criminal; a type of socialist pity is their most attractive disguise. And, in fact, the fatalism of the weak of will starts to look surprisingly attractive when it can present itself as “la religion de la souffrance humaine”: this is its “good taste.”

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 23

Certainty

If NLP is applied wrongly then NLP practitioners try to give people certainty on positive things. NLP becomes positive thinking.  Or worse, positive believing. It leads to wrong ideas like: “if you believe it strongly enough it is true”. What follows are the horrors of NLP. For instance arrogance without competence. “I believe I can do it, therefore I actually can do it.” Or blaming the victim: “you are still ill because you didn’t believe strongly enough you would become better”.

Such bad NLP practitioners overlook the fact that certainty closes off other possibilities and therefore limits someone’s world model. In fact when NLP is applied correctly it teaches how to deal positively with uncertainty. Only because a situation is uncertain doesn’t mean you ought to feel bad about it. You can have good feelings in uncertain circumstances. Your feelings are independent of your current situation. If you are ill there is the possibility that you get better. Feeling relaxed and promoting the chance of getting better are smart strategies without the need to believe with absolute certainty. If you want to do something, but you can’t do it yet, there is the possibility that you may learn to do so in the future.

To him who feels himself predestined to seeing and not believing, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 112

Change

Besides the basic NLP presuppositions, there are also the presuppositions of the metamodel and the Miltonmodel. The presupposition of change is one of them.

These divorces of doing and doer, of doing and being done to, of being and becoming, of cause and effect, belief in change already presupposes the belief in something which ‘changes’. reason is the philosophy of what appears obvious.

Notebook 2, autumn 1886 – autumn 1886 paragraph 141

Chunking

Chunking is based on David Boyd’s hierarchical analysis. Chunking is way of determining where the boundaries lie of whatever has our interest. A chunk is a  piece of information at a particular level of details. Up chunking means getting less detail and more abstraction by figuring out of what set the subject is part of. Down chunking is the opposite: getting more details and less abstraction. Lateral chunking is getting more similar informational pieces at the same level of detail/abstraction. Finally there is a metaprogram called chunk-size where people filter out information that differs from their preferred level of details and abstraction.

Order of rank. – There are, first of all, superficial thinkers; secondly, deep thinkers – those who go down into the depths of a thing; thirdly, thorough thinkers, who thoroughly explore the grounds of a thing – which is worth very much more than merely going down into its depths! – finally, those who stick their heads into the swamp: which ought not to be a sign either of depth or of thoroughness! They are the dear departed underground.

Daybreak paragraph 446

Clarification

It is interesting to replace “teacher” with “NLP trainer” in the quote below and try to figure out what would follow. It suggests that there are at least three different kinds of NLP trainers. The first one is already satisfied if there are people in the training room. The second one is only happy if he is able to influence the audience. The third one wants to clarify NLP and openly show the good, the bad and the ugly of NLP and only then influence his audience.

Within NLP there is a clear division between the metamodel and the Miltonmodel. The metamodel is for clarification while the Miltonmodel is for influence.

The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the difference of their lists of desirable things — in their regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized desirable things: — it manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually having and possessing a desirable thing. As regards a woman, for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for possession, sees the “question mark”, the mere apparentness of such ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for his sake what she has or would like to have — only then does he look upon her as “possessed.” A third, however, has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a fantasy of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no
longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more refined thirst for possession, says to himself: “One may not deceive where one desires to possess” — he is irritated and impatient at the idea that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: “I must, therefore, make myself known, and first of all learn to know myself!” Among helpful and charitable people one almost always finds that clumsy deceitfulness which first adjusts and adapts him who is to be helped: as though, for instance, he should “merit” help, seek just their help, and would show himself deeply grateful, attached, and subservient to them for all help. With these conceits, they take control of the needy as a property, just as in general they are charitable and helpful out of a desire for property. One finds them jealous when they are crossed or forestalled in their charity. Parents involuntarily make something like themselves out of their children — they call that “education”; no mother doubts at the bottom of her heart that the child she has born is thereby her property, no father hesitates about his right to his own ideas and notions of worth. Indeed, in former times fathers deemed it right to use their discretion concerning the life or death of the newly born(as among the ancient Germans). And like the father, so also do the teacher, the class, the priest, and the prince still see in every new individual an unobjectionable opportunity for a new possession. And it follows from this . . .

Beyond Good & Evil paragraph 194

Coaching

One of the most well known applications of NLP is life coaching. NLP has a very good program to make sure that you learn how to make great decisions, feel good no matter what the circumstances, learn to communicate well with others and achieve your goals. In short, it covers the most important aspects of one life.

Where are the needy in spirit? – Ah! How reluctant I am to force my own ideas upon another! How I rejoice in any mood and secret transformation within myself which means that the ideas of another have prevailed over my own! Now and then, however, I enjoy an even higher festival: when one is for once permitted to give away one’s spiritual house and possessions, like a father confessor who sits in his corner anxious for one in need to come and tell of the distress of his mind, so that he may again fill his hands and his heart and make light his troubled soul! He is not merely not looking for fame: he would even like to escape gratitude, for gratitude is too importunate and lacks respect for solitude and silence. What he seeks is to live nameless and lightly mocked at, too humble to awaken envy or hostility, with a head free of fever, equipped with a handful of knowledge and a bagful of experience, as it were a poor-doctor of the spirit aiding those whose head is confused by opinions without their being really aware who has aided them! Not desiring to maintain his own opinion or celebrate a victory over them, but to address them in such a way that, after the slightest of imperceptible hints or contradictions, they themselves arrive at the truth and go away proud of the fact! To be like a little inn which rejects no one who is in need but which is afterwards forgotten or ridiculed! To possess no advantage, neither better food nor purer air nor a more joyful spirit – but to give away, to give back, to communicate, to grow poorer! To be able to be humble, so as to be accessible to many and humiliating to none! To have much injustice done him, and to have crept through the worm-holes of errors of every kind, so as to be able to reach many hidden souls on their secret paths! For ever in a kind of love and for ever in a kind of selfishness and self-enjoyment! To be in possession of a dominion and at the same time concealed and renouncing! To lie continually in the sunshine and gentleness of grace, and yet to know that the paths that rise up to the sublime are close by! – That would be a life! That would be a reason for a long life!

Daybreak paragraph 449

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