When we speak of experience, we are usually referring to the experience of the individual. And when we look around for what to model, we have naturally been attracted to those Individuals and those abilities that glitter. Like gold itself, their apparent scarcity gives them tremendous value. We mark them out and add them to the list of "human excellence." But that is a relatively short list, artificially truncated, I believe, by the notion of "excellence" itself.

Because we are looking for excellence, where do we tend to look? To the geniuses, the financial whizzes, the guys with big, perfect teeth. Meanwhile, there is a teacher In your child's school who is particularly good at encouraging children to try things they fear may be too difficult for them; meanwhile there is the guy who does your dry cleaning who makes everyone feet that their pant suits and shirts are precious and worthy of being cared for; meanwhile there is a friend of yours that can step out onto a dance floor and let herself go. Modeling is much more than a tool for excellence; modeling is a window on everything that is human.

Now, I have a rather wide Idea of what "everything human means." For Instance, tube worms have been living In the sulfurous heat spewing from vents at the bottom of the ocean for who knows how long. And meanwhile, back on dry land, human beings were evolving. But the moment we learn of those tube worms, they become part of the human world, of our world. And we become part of the tube worm's world, though I have no idea what that is as an experience for them. It is an experience for us, however. To look at, touch, think about, perceive them is human experience, our experience and, so, open to modeling.

Whether any of our tube worm experiences is worth modeling depends upon who you ask. And I think we need to ask around more than we are currently. For instance, there Is the ability of the tube worm biologist to want to know how a living system works. Just that wanting to know is itself an ability. Or the ability to devote oneself to a project that will take years, or the ability to find something wriggling and pale in the dim light beautiful, the ability to conquer fear and climb into a minisub to descend to crushing depths, the ability to assemble facts and derive an hypothesis. The notion of excellence can act as an experiential and perceptual filter that obscures the hundreds of plain old competencies and experiences that actually make up our daily lives. Well, competence is how we get things done in life, and experience is where we live. I am not by any means against excellence. But I do think it has skewed our attention, veiling our eyes to the infinite wonders that we could be noticing, appreciating and bringing into our own lives that are happening right around us, all the time. I think we would be much better off seeking human competence rather than excellence. And where should we look for these abilities? That world of possibilities Is sitting right beside you, right In front of and behind you, right inside you ... A hundred million miracles... are happening every day.

NLP produces its share of those miracles, and I have no doubt that the work we have been doing in NLP will continue to make the lives of many individuals much, much better. I do have doubts, however, about whether that work will address the bigger problems of societies and clashing cultures, problems that seem Intractable, that keep chugging along despite so marry great efforts and sacrifices over so many years. I think that NLP as a discipline and, in particular, modeling do have real contributions to make toward addressing these larger problems. To do this we will need to stop outside of the territory we are accustomed to. And I think that Gregory Bateson's concept of Levels of Learning can help us do this. (My sketch will be unjustly brief, but I hope offers enough to give us a basis to move forward.)