Noam Chomsky (1928) is een Amerikaanse taalkundige (net als John Grinder) en filosoof en wordt beschouwd als een van de meest invloedrijke taalkundigen. Evenals mensen zoals Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson en Gregory Bateson is Chomsky een belangrijk rolmodel geweest voor Richard Bandler en John Grinder in de ontwikkeling van NLP.

Zo introduceerde Chomsky het onderscheid tussen oppervlaktestructuur en dieptestructuur -begrippen die vandaag de dag nog steeds worden behandeld in een NLP practitioner opleiding. Volgens NLP grondleggers Richard Bandler en John Grinder gaat er bij de transformatie van dieptestructuur naar oppervlaktestructuur veel belangrijke informatie verloren door de processen van weglating, generalisatie en vervorming.

Diverse NLP kernbegrippen wordt door Chomsky ondersteund en bevestigd, waaronder ecologie, metamodel vragen en herkadering. Zo ook de NLP vooronderstelling “De kaart is niet het gebied”. Deze vooronderstelling stelt dat de betekenis (of interpretatie) die toekennen aan de realiteit niet de werkelijke realiteit is. We zien “de realiteit” door een verzameling van filters (overtuigingen, waarden, herinneringen, metaprogramma’s, etc) die bepalen hoe we de werkelijkheid ervaren of interpreteren. Aangezien iedereen andere filters heeft, is onze perceptie van de werkelijkheid ook anders. De perfecte waarheid is er dus niet, maar wordt gevormd door hoe we naar de wereld kijken. Vandaag de dag is hij bij het grote publiek vooral bekend om zijn kritische houding ten aanzien van de media, politiek en macht.

ENKELE QUOTES VAN CHOMSKY OM OVER NA TE DENKEN

“The major media-particularly, the elite media that set the agenda that others generally follow-are corporations “selling” privileged audiences to other businesses. It would hardly come as a surprise if the picture of the world they present were to reflect the perspectives and interests of the sellers, the buyers, and the product. Concentration of ownership of the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values; it is not easy to say one thing and believe another, and those who fail to conform will tend to be weeded out by familiar mechanisms.”

“If the media were honest, they would say, Look, here are the interests we represent and this is the framework within which we look at things. This is our set of beliefs and commitments. That’s what they would say, very much as their critics say. For example, I don’t try to hide my commitments, and the Washington Post and New York Times shouldn’t do it either. However, they must do it, because this mask of balance and objectivity is a crucial part of the propaganda function. In fact, they actually go beyond that. They try to present themselves as adversarial to power, as subversive, digging away at powerful institutions and undermining them. The academic profession plays along with this game.”

“One of the questions asked in that study was, How many Vietnamese casualties would you estimate that there were during the Vietnam war? The average response on the part of Americans today is about 100,000. The official figure is about two million. The actual figure is probably three to four million. The people who conducted the study raised an appropriate question: What would we think about German political culture if, when you asked people today how many Jews died in the Holocaust, they estimated about 300,000? What would that tell us about German political culture?“

“The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people“

You never need an argument against violence, you need an argument for it.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed we survived this long.

There are two problems for our species’ survival -nuclear ware and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly.