(no subject)

[solitary_summer]

Meine Mutter und ich hatten keine Sprache miteinander. Die ihrige dient nicht dem Gedankenaustauch, sondern der Manipulation. Meine Mutter ist nicht identisch mit ihrer Sprache, war es nie, ihre Sprache ist wie die Garderobe der Schauspieler, sie sucht sich aus, was gerade in ihre jeweilige Rolle paßt. Sie verwendet die Wörter wie Schminke. Die lassen sich das nicht gefallen, und in ihrer Tücke verschmieren sie ihr die Gedanken.

(Ruth Klüger, weiter leben)

And that is essentially what bothered me about the NLP blather they tried to teach us us at the last sales training seminar we were forced to suffer through. Now personally I'm a really bad liar, unless I have enough time to prepare beforehand, and sometimes wish I were a better one, because I don't actually think a lie is the worst thing in the world - often harmless enough and sometimes less painful than the truth, unless you actually start building something important based on lies -, but what I do believe is that you need to be as clear as possible in the space of your own head about whether you're lying or telling the truth. Human perception is faulty enough as it is, and the brain a strange and confusing place; we often lie to ourselves (and others) without even knowing. (If you need proof of that, try to work in retail sometimes and persuade a customer that you never actually sold the product they're convinced they've seen in your store. These people are not stupid, or crazy, or lying. They simply misremember, and they're completely certain they're right. They're not all that rare, either. Sometimes I wonder how judges do their work.) Our, or at least most people's, thoughts will always be muddled with comparatively few moments of clarity, so in my opinion the last thing one should do is consciously try to blur and obfuscate even more and add to the muddle. And precision in language is important, because language and thoughts are so closely linked that they always influence each other; maybe can't exist without the other.