A temporary solution to a permanent problem
Remember the saying about suicide: a permanent solution to a temporary problem. When I first entered the community, I thought PU workshops/bootcamps can be truly transformational, to shortcut/bypass the traditional psychotherapeutic options. As I am more than one year into this, I realize that for many, PU is a temporary fix for a permanent problem. As soon as the post-workshop high wears off, people will revert back to who they were before.
People are creatures of habit; they repeatedly do what they have done before even if their actions are detrimental to their own survival and/or reproductive success. I see PU changing many people, including myself. That's because PU uncovered our hidden talents, who we were before we were weighted down, covered up, sequestered away our sociable character traits. By releasing our inhibitions, as countless others have done with alcohol, we reveal our inner character, for many, they turn out to be very attractive, magnetic, and thus, become more successful than before. Sadly, for many others, their innate traits are so flawed, so anti-social, despite deprogramming that can be done at workshops will never fix. For them, the proverbial train has left the station, they might as well resigned to their current station in life. I.e. they are where they are because they couldn't go any further in life.
This is what I mean by a permanent problem. So no amount of temporary fixes can get to the core of their character flaw. People who run workshops that truly want to change people should start screening their students. They have to select for people who have their lives together, they are care-free, they are ready to have fun, then teaching them how to have fun is easy enough. Otherwise, they are just spending time to seduce their students, give them that temporary high. Few lives are changed. The only permanent difference is the transfer of wealth from students to instructors. In which case, these students might as well pay for sexual services instead of PU workshops that will not do anything permanent.
Of the people I see that have been changed by workshops, I can see that they already have some innate talents and they work hard to develop their skills. So they don't really have a permanent problem. Just like oxidized copper, underneath that patina, these people already have that shiny eye-catching characteristic. For those with the permanent problem, they are more like iron, rub away the rust, they will just get oxidized again, and repeating this process will only wear away their dull unattractive core. Sure, they can get a paint job, but after a few scratches, they are back to rust-prone dull metal. So what are you... someone with a shiny core or just a lame dullard with no sense of fun?!
Not everyone is born to be a winner. Some are meant to serve as warnings to others.
2 comments:
Ooooh, a rather cynical post from someone who is so positive! Seriously though, I can understand where you're coming from. Perhaps through foolishness or just plain positivity have always thought that anyone and everyone can change (except for extreme retardations such as George Bush). The reality of the matter, in my opinion, is that most (i.e. 99%) won't due to various reasons. Fundamentally, I don't agree that they can't change, but in practice I believe what you say to be true. Most people are beyond help, and these workshops are just giving them temporary highs by pushing them way out of their comfort zones
As usual you set the bar too high for more simple bloggers like me to follow. In order for someone to change they need to truly want to change, more than they're willing to accept things as they are. We are creatures of patterns (or habit). However, all habits, good, bad, or neutral, all have some positive intention behind them, even if we are not consciously aware of it. It is a system of preference. A presupposition of NLP is that people are not inherently broken, and that they 100% of the time choose the course of action that is representatively the most beneficial to them through their map of reality. If I throw the clothes on the ground, rather than taking the time to fold them and put them away, sure it may be unhygienic but through the software that is running the decision making process, dropping the clothes is strictly preferred to putting them away. We consciously understand that one action is not better than another but we are neither truly conscious nor rational beings. This principle is even displayed in introductory microeconomics, that people will 100% of the time select goods that for whatever reason has the highest utility to them at a time. It is a well documented demonstration of human behavior. Any action we take is representative of a preference to perform one thing rather than another, as we can only choose one action to perform at a time. You're right, we tend to do things that are counterintuitive to reproduction or survival, but that is because the alternative causes enough discomfort that we don't choose the smarter option. It is often documented with hypnosis cases that oftentimes behavioral quirks are learned behaviors developped through meeting with discomfort or pain. If someone got rejected and was embarassed, the other than conscious learns that it doesn't want to experience this again, and will traumatize a person with anxiety even if they dont recall the original stimuli that created the fear. This is almost always the case with phobias. I would love to go much more in-depth and debate on this but space is limited and it would be more appropriate for my blog ;) Referring to: "People are creatures of habit; they repeatedly do what they have done before even if their actions are detrimental to their own survival and/or reproductive success."
Post a Comment