dogmas and dogmatics

Every time I start a course and just after the welcome I tell my students: "Do not believe anything of what I am going to say. Put it to the test and if it works for you, use it until it stops doing it or you find something better" .

NLP it was a concept developed by Bandler and Grinder based on pragmatism. That is, in the use of models to interpret reality and to interpret within this reality, the models of others.

Another of the basic tenets of NLP is relativism as they present it in the introduction to the book Neurolingistic Programming Vol.1 (please do not confuse with the boring book: Introduction to NLP). Without going into details now, they proposal is that the models are validated by its usefulness in a particular context and understanding that they will always have an effect on the observed and the observer, which will affect the final outcome of the observation.

The first derivation of this axiom is that there may be no dogmas. Any model used to describe someone or an experience, is going to be relative to the user and the context in which it uses. If everything is relative, if the observer affects the observed, and if the models used depend on the variables present at that time, who can say nothing? Probably no one.

Relativism need not lead to nihilism, or to chaos or to the total uncertainty. In fact, is based on the same principles of quantum physics and the uncertainty principle, we can determine where only certain qualities of the atomic or subatomic particles, while others will inevitably change by the mere fact of being observed.

In our case, the simple fact to look at someone's head by asking questions, affects the mental structure that he had until then and we're bringing new information to his system, so we can not be certain how it was before our intervention.

The funny thing of the case, is that our structure is also affected by the introduction of information from the scrutiny of the head of others.

But in addition we can only be sure of the outcome probabilistically used to describe the reality. In other words, it is very unlikely to be 100% sure of anything.

Anyone who claims something roundly in NLP, or that classify people by representational systems, or that snaps into metaprograms, or speak of the metamodel as if they were boxes, or any such clear evidence of ignorance, probably does not have the most remote idea what he's talking about.

That could be a good moment to escape through the closest door , but not before claiming your savings.