Rabbis, Hitchens and Systems – NLP and Beliefs!
The other day I presented to the Systems and Cybernetics in Organisations (SCiO) Group at Manchester Business School on the exotically named subject ‘Aligning Intra-personal Systems with Organisational Systems via NLP’. Without going into too much detail of the presentation let me look at one of the analogies I used to make my points.
Many of you will be familiar with the late Christopher Hitchens – the writer, journalist and polemicist who died last December. Hitchens was particularly well-known for his vociferous atheism and his combative, no-punches-pulled style of debating.
Hitchens locked horns in public debates with many prominent religious figures including the Reverend Al Sharpton and Rabbi Schmuley Boteach. Hitchens wasn’t backward about coming forward and made excoriating attacks upon religious faith. It was clear that Hitchens believed that reason, logic and rationale were on his side and that any ‘reasonable’ man or woman should have been won over by his oratory.
I do not for one moment intend to render an opinion on the merits of the religious question. Rather, I merely intend to point out that Hitchens did not seem to fully appreciate the complexity of what he was attempting to overthrow or the vested interest of his adversaries in resisting him. Let me explain.
NLP Trainers and authors, Joseph O’Connor and John Seymour observe:
“Our inner world of beliefs, thoughts, representational systems and sub-modalities also form a system.”
I would add that this system includes our sense of personal identity – the “I am…” statements we make about ourselves. These inner or intra-personal systems integrate with other external systems – the inter-personal systems we share with friends and family, our culture, our community, our society and so on and so forth. In totality, you have a wide system, made up of the interplay of a number of sub-systems. What do systems like to do? Well, if they are fairly stable and produce useful outcomes, they tend to want to preserve themselves and don’t particularly like being disrupted or thrown out of balance. They maintain their own ecology and homeostasis we might say.
Let’s look at the sort of systems that a distinguished Rabbi, perhaps someone with a teaching position as well as a congregation, his own radio show and a number of books in print will be part of. Such a person’s personal identity, beliefs, values, family life, relationships, self-esteem, community standing, reputation, career, financial security – just about everything, in fact – are all predicated upon the truth of his religious faith. The impact of that faith being undermined or shattered is almost unimaginable. Yet, Hitchens believed that it should readily yield to reason and logic and that his adversaries should have been ready to abandon their religious faith as readily as redecorating their bedroom.
Please be aware that when you are attempting to change someone’s mind, or are disagreeing with them over a matter that is enormously important to them, you may in actuality be attempting to destabilise a critical part of their personal architecture. Proceed with tact, care and sensitivity.
Tags: beliefs, NLP, self-organising systems, systems approach, Systems Thinking
Share