Quote of the Day - 'Knowledge & Action'

"Knowledge and action are twins, each glorifying the other."
--- Rabbi Yoseph Kimchi

(From Jewish Word Review, Tues. July 28, 2009)

How Not To Study General Semantics

In Art and Illusion, E.H. Gombrich wrote: 

"To probe a hole we first use a straight stick to see how far it takes us. To probe the visible world we use the assumption that things are simple until they prove to be otherwise." (The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, p. 231)

The point I want to make here with this quote is that one must first use the tool, whether a stick or an assumption or a system of 'thought', i.e., sincerely seeking to understand and apply it (and the understanding and application go hand-in-hand) to see how far it takes us. Only then can one can be in a position to know its limitations and in turn criticize it. 

This relates to learning general semantics, the non-aristotelian study and methodology formulated by Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book Science and Sanity. Korzybski early realized that one of the main obstacles that people created for themselves in understanding it, applying it—and eventually also realizing its limitations—involved 'abnormal negativistic attitudes',  arguing, verbalizing, and 'philosophizing' about it and in turn rejecting it before applying it.  As he told many people quite early, general semantics involves a practice, a discipline that one needs to train oneself in. A prematurely 'critical'— i.e., negativistic—attitude can prevent one from learning anything new. 

Here is a letter that he wrote to Otis Dixon Phillips on June 21, 1945:

"...I am writing to you to clear up the best I can the problem of 'abnormal negativistic attitudes'. It is a most serious problem and very fundamental in psychiatry, and more so in daily life, usually disregarded. In living life there is such a thing as the 'investigatory reflex', without which life in general, and particularly human life, could not exist in  their most complex environment. This means that to adjust ourselves to environments we have to study the environment, in other words investigate it. If we have the sick negativistic [underlined in original-BIK] attitude we will not investigate, and so never learn by experience.

In the impact of life, if we are not 'open-minded', willing to learn, we are hopeless. In schooling we know that to learn anything we have to be receptive, and therefore not negativistic. A damn fool little boy in school who tries to be a smarty (negativistic) never will learn anything, and so the situation is hopeless. I can do no better to explain, short of a treatise, what negativism can do in life. There is no learning with negativism, and human life depends on learning. 

If you would investigate life and even sick patients in hospitals, you would understand what negativism means. It's really a wrecker of human life. It definitely involves fundamental life issues. Certainly 'abnormal negativistic attitudes' mean much more than a layman, without studying these issues, can understand. 

This is the best I can do to answer you by letter. 

Negativism certainly comes in fundamentally in our work. To undo that is extremely difficult, if at all possible, as it involves a whole reorientation of our attitudes. 

With all best wishes,                                                      
Yours cordially,

Alfred Korzybski"

[AK to Otis Dixon Phillips, June 21, 1945. IGS Archives at Read House, Ft. Worth, Texas]

Quote of the Day - 'Words'

"Words are aspects of a much wider communicative context, most of which is not verbal at all."– Kenneth Burke ["Foreword," The Philosophy of Literary Form, p. xvii]

Personal Time-Binding

An aspect of time-binding involves each of us learning from ourselves, learning how to make the most of our individual experiences. My wife has referred to this as "personal time-binding." Becoming conscious of yourself as a personal time-binder, you can recognize that you communicate with yourself as well as with others.

We talk to ourselves a lot. We can use this internal chatter for worse and better. When we label ourselves “stupid” or with similar negative higher-order abstractions, we create a negative environment for ourselves. When we make perfectionistic demands on ourselves, unconditionally and absolutistically telling ourselves what we “must” do, we diminish our chances of fully realizing our potentialities. Instead, as Albert Ellis has emphasized throughout his writings, we can extensionalize our internal chatter, just as we extensionalize our talk with others. Ellis’ books provide valuable material for learning how to talk to yourself in this way.

For example, I can change absolutistic demands, such as “I must have good relationships” into probabilistic preferences, such as “I prefer to have good relationships but I don’t absolutely have to have them.” Rather than absolutistically ‘shoulding on myself,’ I can use conditional or non-absolutistic shoulds instead. So I can tell myself that “If I want good relationships, I probably should accept other people and take responsibility for how I act. However, it is not absolutely guaranteed that people will accept me just because I accept them and act responsibly. Moreover, I am not a total ‘shit’ if I fail to do this perfectly all of the time even if it might seem more preferable.”

In learning how to talk to yourself this way, you not only take greater responsibility for your behavior, but take responsibility for treating yourself well. Thus, you can learn how to use your capacities most effectively by cooperating with yourself — enhancing your realistic self-acceptance.

Your personal time-binding includes both the environment you create for yourself and others as well as the personal legacy you leave for future generations. As you act in such a way as to bring your legacy to fruition, you contribute to your own and others’ daily well-being. Time-Binders — go for it!

[Adapted from the article Living Extensionally, published in ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, July 2004]

"Words As Symbolic Communication In The Healthcare Setting"

In an excellent article, "Words As Symbolic Communication In The Healthcare Setting," Christopher Bear Beam writes about his experiences as a hospital chaplin and as a patient and how he has used general-semantics notions to help himself and others. He notes:

Today, after a number of years of doing this work, I have concluded that those people who work in the field of the Healing Arts often are not equipped with the understanding of how their words are symbolic forms of communication having great import in their client’s minds. Since they are often seen as the experts in the field (this is starting to change as healthcare moves to more of participatory process, but there still are huge gaps in its practice) there is a primary accountability for taking the lead in communicating in a healthy way. I guess what I’m also saying is that it would be helpful for medical professionals to learn the principles of General Semantics that would give them more tools to work with in dialoguing with the people they serve. Another way of saying this is that it would give them a supportive means of symbol making that leads to more healthy outcomes.

As a veteran physical therapist and general-semantics scholar/practitioner I heartily agree.

The entire article is worth reading, printing out, and studying. And I don't mind that he plugs my wife's and my book Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics, Revised Second Edition. 8-)

Read Words As Symbolic Communication In The Healthcare Setting

"The Language of Confusion" by Rabbi Yonason Goldson

I'm guessing that this commentary by Rabbi Yonason Goldson will probably offend some of my readers in some way. So be it. I find it interesting and pertinent to this blog so am posting a link to it here. Rabbi Goldson contends the following: that 60 years later, Orwell's dystopian vision is more prophetic than ever.

A snippet from his essay:

"Teachers, be careful with your words," warns the Talmud, "lest the disciples who follow you will drink of evil waters and die." When the waters of wisdom become polluted with confusion and contradiction, it is society's youth who will pay the price through the erosion of moral clarity and moral principles.

I think Korzybski would agree to that. I know I do.

Here's the link for those who have an interest: The Language of Confusion

General Semantics-A Theory of Metacognition

In an article entitled Bridging the Research-Practice Divide: Using General-Semantics in Physical Therapy Practice I wrote the following which I still think applies. I shamelessly quote myself:

General-semantics constitutes a theory of metacognition, a working theory of how humans construct their perceptions, beliefs, theories, etc. Metacognition, thinking about thinking, has traditionally been considered part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, the theory of knowledge.

Over the years many philosophers such as Plato and Descartes have speculated and theorized about how we know what we know. These theorists lacked much empirical knowledge of the human nervous system, psychology and other relevant areas of knowledge such as how scientists and mathematicians actually behave in order to gain knowledge. As a result their views were often riddled with untenable assumptions such as that of a `mind' separate from a `body'. Among other things, what distinguished Korzybski from these theorists was his effort to bring to bear studies in neuroscience, behavioral/social science, natural science, mathematics, linguistics and other fields to develop a scientific and thus up-to-date and open-ended, applied epistemology.

Reflections about Reflections

Korzybski would usually wrap up the lecture part of his seminars by reciting several quotes related to self-reflexiveness, one of the central formulations of his system. Self-reflexiveness involves the notion that you can make a map of your map, talk about your talking, abstract from your abstractions, 'think' about your 'thinking', etc., ongoingly.

Korzybski presented these favorite quotes of his in the unabridged version of a paper General Semantics, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Prevention, which he delivered at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Cincinnati in 1940. He wrote:

'It should be noticed that in human life self-reflexiveness has even "material" implications, which introduce serious difficulties. Professor Cassius J. Keyser expresses this very aptly: "It is obvious, once the fact is pointed out, that the character of human history, the character of human conduct, and the character of all our human institutions depend both upon what man is and in equal or greater measure upon what we humans think man is." This is profoundly true.

'Professor Arthur S. Eddington describes the same problem in these words: "And yet, in regard to the nature of things, this knowledge is only an empty shell--a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content, which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness. Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics, and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. And, moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own."

'Dr. Alexis Carrel formulated the same difficulty differently, but just as aptly: "To progress again man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor." '

'General Semantics' Wordle

A wordle.com image I just produced from a word-list by my friend and colleague, Milton Dawes: