There’s this unhealthy bonkers fallacy perpetuated by a lot of the CM crowd and NLP crowd, the kind of thing that you hear a lot of RAW acolytes spouting about, that you can change the software of your brain and upgrade, get the manual to your psyche or even download a new operating system, that beliefs are plug-in and play modules that you can switch at will and that the decision to believe something with a few days of positive self-talk will make it so.
Ugh.
I was always taught in literary criticism to begin with a paragraph that states the case you want to argue against before stating your own case. That I do this with passion is because I tend to do most things with passion.
In this case, I’ve noticed for a long time the tendency to mistake these kind of metaphors for reality. As metaphor they’re useful on occasion, as reality they’re woefully insufficient and encourage the sense of Cartesian dualism that I then go on to argue against. I believe they encourage this type of dualism because our minds are a part of the system that is called “us.” Change in the mind does not have a cause and effect change in the body (and vice versa) – that is dualistic because it separates the nature of mind and body into a complementary pair. It is more true to say that a change in the mind is a change in the body, and that a change in the body is a change in the mind. There is no computer that has that rich and fluid an interface, where you can’t tell where software, hardware and programmer end and begin, such is the genius of how it’s made.
I do this by listing different ways of metaphors until their absurdity becomes self-evident. Clearly I was wrong, and I’m sorry if you got the wrong end of the stick. A lot of this meaning doesn’t become apparent until you compare it with the second paragraph (they set each other into context using the aforementioned device):
The part of our beliefs that we can consciously have an effect on is the tip of the iceberg. Try changing a belief that’s in your muscle, your posture, reinforced by a lifetime of habitual stance and breathing and has shaped how your body has developed, that’s so deeply a part of your physiology that you don’t notice how it manifests because it’s so ingrained into who you are that it can’t even really be called “unconscious.” Good luck even noticing that shit, let alone trying to come to terms with it and transcend it. That’s a lifetime’s work.
The second part of the point I was making with the first. If your only tools are predicated on the type of thinking I listed in the first paragraph, then you’re not going to get to grips with much significant changework: your superficial beliefs may change, but the ones that are hard-wired will only be noticed and changed with time and hard work (or Bioenergetic/Reichian therapy).
If anything, this is the very opposite of dispirited. I’ve had the veracity of these ideas and methods of working drummed into me at length by their advocates. I didn’t want to believe them, changed my mind, realised that my understanding of myself and my toolkit had huge blindspots, and am now eager to put in the work and learn another model of psychology to fill in the gaps. It’s not been easy, has required signififcant change and investment on my part (including a fair bit of humble pie), and I’m now enthusiastically committed to vigilance concerning a far larger set of my behaviours and reactions for the rest of my life.
I used to believe that all change could be easy. I’ve revised this belief to “change is often easier than many individuals believe.” It’s a step from an easily adopted slogan to a hard-won victory in moving my beliefs about myself and the world closer to what I perceive to be reality.
The seemingly miraculous tools I learned from NLP are still in my toolkit, and I’m happy to have them there. They get used a lot. And I’m still committed to expanding my toolkit and learning other ideas as well.
With their teeth and claws and magical powers. Like fireballs. And their knowledge of the entire Warhammer rule set.
Their rancid breath makes me want to vomit.
This is just silliness. I’m taking the piss out of demons, beings which I wouldn’t go as far to say even exist. I wouldn’t go as far as to say they don’t…
This wasn’t an attack on anyone here. I’m sorry if anyone felt attacked as a result of reading it.
Hypocrisy is a not putting into practise what you preach, so this could only be evidenced as hypocritical if it were compared against other aspects of my behaviour. Quoting it in isolation is not evidence of anything.
Having grown up in Church (and only really exited that establishment a few years ago), I know a lot of people who jumped to interpret a huge amount of phenomena as a “demonic attack.” I used laughter to dispel a lot of this stuff, and hoped to do the same here by “doing a Balrog.”
I don’t believe in the basis of your question, Netaungrot. There’s no such thing as an anti-virus program for anything other than the type of machine I’m typing into. I could pick any spurious technique and pretend to have de-loused myself, but all I will have done is run one technique, to which my experience will conform like plastic and give me results in accordance with that technique.
Again, in order to demonstrate that something is hypocritical you have to specifically site the other aspect of me that it is at odds with.
This quote is describing the self-fulfilling nature of metaphors is psychological and magical work. If you use computer metaphors about self-change you’ll get results in accordance with that metaphor, just as if you use Kabalah you’ll get results in accordance with that system, or indeed any psychological or magical model. Your results will be predicated on the tools and beliefs you use.
However, none of these models are true, and all have their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve already gone into detail on why I believe the computer metaphor to be incomplete and misleading if it is mistaken for reality, and some of the unhelpful beliefs or bias that come attached. Having understood the model and what it can and can’t do, I can use it as I see fit, understanding that it is only a model and not to be mistaken for the real thing.
That paragraph was explaining that I couldn’t answer the question you posed because I didn’t believe in the premise. An answer that didn’t do this would have validated the presuppositions your question was based on.
One more thing: the NLP spirit is not anything's possible. That’s a gross oversimplification, and is often the kind of thing you’ll hear from those who believe that computer metaphors are an accurate reflection of personal changework. It could more accurately be defined as: Often more is possible than people believe there to be.
I’ve pretty much backed up my reasoning behind this paragraph already. It’s largely to do with my passion for reattaching my conception of the world to the world, to not think simplistically, to reject blind adherence to slogans and metaphors. I put a lot of work into thinking about my ideas, actions and the consequences. I think change is something that will last my whole lifetime. I’m eager to see who I’ll become.
I hope this exposition has been useful to people and the thread. |
