If you’ve already gone beyond the NLP = manipulation then I promise, the next post will be more positive and practical.
If you think that NLP has no intrinsic moral values you’d be right. NLP is a tool, a technology - it has all the intrinsic morality of a machete or, more precisely, a scalpel…
You can do all kinds of lovely things with a scalpel. You can use a scalpel to cut delicately into sensitive tissue with the result of health. You can use it as a tool for cosmetic surgery – thus creating the appearance of health – a little superficial, sometimes pleasing, but taken to an extreme, quite grotesque.
In fact there are some people who apply ‘rapport and influence skills’ to create all the genuine connection of a silicone dancer during a lap dance. With all that jutting and gyrating it might be fun, it might be exciting and the dancer may succeed in creating a warm feeling. But you know why that dancer is dancing that way and it isn’t because they see the light inside of your wonderful being. It’s because they imagine your wallet being lighter.
I have met people who use NLP on rather than with business partners, customers and so on. They sometimes get away with it for a while, but sooner or later, you catch on and then the technique becomes transparent. Most of us have a sense of whether someone is genuine or not, just like being able to spot sales people on the phone within the first two words of their pitch. We can mistake or ignore the warnings for a while, out of curiousity or politeness, but those relationships rarely get very far.
Given that most of us can spot manipulators some way off, I wonder why people feel so strongly about the idea of NLP as manipulation. I’ve come up with two reasons.
The first is that they are scared that other people will using cunning NLP tools to manipulate them. Derren Brown certainly does some spectacular manipulation for his TV shows. What you don’t see of course are the times it doesn’t work or his use of stage magic which isn't a part of NLP training ( Derren in action). For me though this is an argument for learning NLP, so that you know how to defend against psychic attack by NLP. I put the 'psychic attack' part in italics because it seems so cheesy to me.
The other reason is that people worry that if they had this amazing mind power that they imagine NLP confers, that they would be tempted, ohhh so tempted, to use it. They picture strings of crying ex-virgins and weeping families barefoot in windswept streets after having been ruined by an unscrupulous mind trick. Perhaps they fantasise about having their own cult filled with adoring brainwashed adepts slaving to buy the 42nd Rolls Royce. Then there are the curses, NLP can get rid of phobias quickly and easily, so it can probably install them too. It is used to help heal people from a wide range of diseases so it could be used toxically too. It is that scalpel used as a deadly weapon. Those enemies won’t know what hit them (laugh evil laugh).
Of course if you’re not tempted by these things, then your moral fibre is probably sufficient for you to use the scalpel of NLP in a wholesome, helpful way (smile smugly).
Which brings me to the values vacuum of NLP. As I said, NLP does not have morals. There are no ten commandments of NLP – it is not a religion. NLP does have presuppositions, ideas based on observations that change the way you perceive and act in the world.
One observation of NLP is that in all cultures people have values and that given the choice they act in a way that satisfies those values. NLP does not need to prescribe values because people come with their own. As people develop, their values become increasingly clear, increasingly important to them as a guide and a choice for behaviour. Ignoring those values comes at the price of loss of happiness.
Sure I could use NLP to get people to do things against their better judgement and wellbeing, but it would leave such a bad taste in my mouth that the idea dies as soon as it appears and well before action.
With increasing development the perception through time and across the spaces of the world becomes more and more profound. We live in a culture that has developed to the point where people are willing to protest in the street for the sake of others that they do not know and many of whom would wipe us out if it was in their power.
That compassion is a triumph. In less developed societies the easy option of genocide is still being taken. That compassion isn’t the result of religious education as our society is becoming increasingly secular. It comes from rational thought that allows us to recognise that people are basically the same, whatever the race, they feel the same hope, despair, joy and pain that you and I do. It comes from the ability to imagine different perspectives beyond family, tribe, race or religion. Not that this triumphant compassion takes place in a perfect society.
You can probably think of some parts of your nation’s behaviour that you are unhappy about or even ashamed of - its unpatriotic not to. When you think of them you feel pain for those things that offend your values and by implication, however distant, you are a part of. As a result of your awareness there is the possibility of positive change.
It’s you who has the values, and that’s why NLP doesn’t. NLP doesn’t presume to dictate your values to you. NLP is a tool to use yourself more effectively, to uncover your values, to give you more choices to act in a way so that those values get honoured in the world.
So you could use NLP in a shallow, manipulative value free way. You could see it in a way that reaped some short term result and lead towards distrust, disillusionment and despair, but given all the healtheir ways you can use it, why would you want to?
Damn I’ve strayed some way from that lap dancer in paragraph 5. As I said something practical for next time.
