Science and Sanity Haiku 2

What credit goes to
one who places plastic card
where no money is ?

Science and Sanity Haiku 1

Hypnotizing words
revive old deep-grooved patterns—
How to get out? Shhhh!

General Semantics Glossary - Dating

Dating: attaching dates to our evaluations; reminds us of changes occurring over time.

Note
(1) from Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Revised Second Edition.

"Nothing Twice"

In Science and Sanity, Korzybski stated one of the basic postulates of general semantics, non-identity, thusly:

"We must be aware continuously that in life on the un-speakable level we deal only with absolute individuals, be they objects, situations, or s.r [semantic (evaluational) reactions]." (p. 396, 5th Ed.)

I found a lovely poem "Nothing Twice" by his fellow Pole Wislawa Szymborska who gives the notion of non-identity her poetic turn. The first verse:

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

A link to the rest of the poem—"Nothing Twice"

General Semantics Glossary - Converging Inferences

Converging Inferences: multiple inferences about a situation which lead to a similar conclusion, or set of conclusions; increases the probable accuracy of those conclusions [given the soundness of the contributing inferences].

Note
(1) from Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Revised Second Edition.

Tribute To A Noble Pole - Jan Karski Corner

The New York Times reports on the dedication yesterday of Jan Karski Corner in New York City. It is a place that I plan to visit the next time I get to NYC to do honor to a hero of civilization and a noble Pole. Jan Karski Corner

As reported in the Times:

The southeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 37th Street, in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan, was given the honorary designation of Jan Karski Corner on Thursday, in memory of the Polish liaison officer who infiltrated the Warsaw ghetto and a German concentration camp and carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to Western leaders.

A monument to Mr. Karski, showing him seated on a bench, holding a cane and with a chess board nearby, was erected at the same intersection in November 2007, outside the Polish Consulate. Mr. Karski, who later became a professor of history at Georgetown University, died in 2000 at the age of 86. The new street sign in his honor stands outside the De Lamar mansion, the consul’s residence.

Karski, at the risk of his own life, was smuggled in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto and a German Death Camp and then made his way to England and the U.S in 1942 to tell what he witnessed of the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis. As an agent of the Polish-Government-in-Exile, he tried to convince the leaders of the countries allied against Germany to do something to save the Jews as well as others being mass-murdered by the Germans. Korzybski was in contact with Polish-emigre groups in the U.S. and knew quite early what was going on, as did many Poles living in the West. He undoubtedly felt proud of the Polish resistance to Germany and of Polish assistance to the Jews, and felt disgust at the vast indifference and inaction in the West.

I've talked to many people—who should know better—who talk as if the Poles at that time were the greatest Jew-haters in Europe. Certainly there were lots of Polish antisemites. But there were antisemites all over Europe and elsewhere. And the Poles as a whole were not the worst. The death camps in Poland were run by Germans not Poles. The Germans also murdered about 3 million ethnic Poles. There was not a Nazi-occupied country in Europe that suffered more than Poland and whose non-Jewish citizens did more for the Jews in their midst—although it certainly wasn't enough. The role of Polish soldiers fighting throughout other theatres of the war for the Allied cause also makes a remarkable and unparalleled story, quite in keeping with the Polish tradition in support of liberty. As an old Polish saying goes—"For your freedom and ours."

Plato and the Art of Reading the Haggada

My media-ecology antennae were out when I saw this Passover-related article on the balance of literacy and orality ( written and oral tradition) in Judaism.

Plato and the Art of Reading the Haggada

General Semantics Glossary - Consciousness of Abstracting

Consciousness of Abstracting: basic goal of general semantics; using our human ability to function with awareness of how we get information and use language; improves how we function individually, in groups, and as cultures. (1)

Note
(1) from Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Revised Second Edition.

Beware Of The Fire Of The Sages

From Passover (starting tonight) to Rosh HaShana (the Jewish New Year), Jews traditionally read a chapter of the Pirkei Avot ("The Ethics of the Fathers"), every Sabbath. The Pirkei Avot mostly consists of one tractate of the Talmud. It's the part of the Talmud that even relatively unlearned Jews like myself seem likely to have read—a book full of practical and moral teachings.

I was dipping into it recently and read a bit that reminded me of Korzybski. Korzybski, a man full of practical and moral teachings, seems more and more to fit the classical curmudgeon mold, the more I learn about him. He had some very hard edges at times with people whom he clearly wanted to teach and help. It put off some of them, I'm nigh sure. Perhaps that hardness comes closer to what one should expect from a teacher like him and not a gentle Mr. or Dr. Feel-Good that some would prefer. The road to becoming wiser, even with help, may inevitably involve bumps and bruises. And our teachers along the way may not seem as nice as we would like—though no excuses for unnecessary cruelty or the foibles of the great. As Rabbi Eliezer said in the Pirkei Avot (Chapter 2),

... You should warm yourself opposite the fire of the Sages, but be cautious that you not be burned by their glowing coals. For their bite is the bite of a fox. Their sting is the sting of a scorpion. Their hiss is the hiss of a serpent. And all their words are coals of fire.