Poland's Fight and the Essence of Judaism - Korzybski's Response to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (An excerpt from Korzybski: A Biography)

In honor of the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began 70 years ago in April 1943, I'm publishing the first few pages of Chapter 55 of Korzybski: A Biography. This section deals with Korzybski's 1943 response to the fate of Poles and Polish Jewry under the iron heel of the Nazi tyranny:  Poland's_Fight_and_the_Essence_of_Judaism

Ayn Nation Under God - A Review

The full title of Hart William’s book of connected essays, Ayn Nation Under God: A Rational Examination As To Why Ayn Rand Is Full Of It, indicates Williams' intent and point of view quite well. The essays (most of which appeared in slightly different form on Williams' blog from 2005 to 2012)  do not pretend to any faux ‘objectivity’. But despite his generally negative opinion of Ayn Rand’s work, her fans and followers will make a mistake if they dismiss Williams’ ebook, available in Amazon Kindle format, as not worthy of their reading time and effort. For them, and for the non-fans of Rand—in and out of academia—many of whom have dismissed her work as unimportant, Williams provides a most valuable service by treating Rand with the respect she deserves as one of the most influential figures of mid-20^th Century to early 21^st Century American thought. 

A veteran print journalist, blogger, screenwriter, novelist and all-around scribe (see His Vorpal Sword) Williams adduces a great deal of evidence to show that Rand—founder of a philosophical school she called "Objectivism"—has become a revered figure and a major inspiration for the Republican Right (especially its more secular wing representing finance and banking) and the allied Libertarian movement, both of which cherish and feel bolstered by Rand’s uber-individualist, anti-government, but pro-corporate outlook. Williams has carefully studied Rand’s work and his “rational examination” focuses on her basic premises: her view of ‘reason’, which he finds inadequate, and her basic understanding of human nature, which he finds lacking, indeed monstrously so. His criticism seems to me—a student and advocate of Alfred Korzybski’s non-aristotelian viewpoint—devastatingly apt.

Although Williams has not studied Korzybski’s work, he has clearly been influenced by some of the ongoing non-aristotelian currents that Korzybski saw developing in the  scientific, intellectual culture of his time, which he sought to systematize and enhance by means of the teachable system that he called “general semantics”. Non-aristotelian I should emphasize was not for Korzybski anti-Aristotle, not even anti aristotelian logic. Aristotle’s logic, for example, may still remain useful—where it applies. But Korzybski did reject the essentialist structural assumptions or metaphysics which Aristotle’s logic in particular embodies when interpreted, as Ayn Rand did, as the overarching basis for human ‘rationality’ and ‘reason’ rather than as a limited set of guidelines for some forms of discourse.

 In his first and perhaps best chapter (written especially for the book), Williams, who as a college philosophy major studied mathematical logic, gives his take on Rand’s trumpeting of the aristotelian ‘laws of thought’ and ‘pure logic’ as the basis for ‘reason’ (in Atlas Shrugged, she titled the three sections of the book “Non-Contradiction”, “Either-Or”, and “A is A”). Williams writes that when he first saw her “A is A” years ago, he said “When?”: “A is A sometimes, but other times it’s not exactly A. In fact, when you say A, you are just specifying THIS A at THAT exact moment in time, which that A will never be again. But it’s close enough for government work, or, in this case, anti-government work.” Williams further discussion of aristotelian logic seems quite in keeping with Korzybski’s take: overdependence on it by using it as a general orientation, as Rand and her followers do, leads to evaluational rigidity and inflexibility.

William’s critique of Rand’s view of human nature also appears quite devastating. Rand cut her heroes from a cartoonish mold where, just as with the fabled politician, they built with their own two hands the log cabin they were born in. She elevates to sacred doctrine an extreme individualism that takes little to no account of the social matrix upon which any individual human accomplishment is based. Perhaps Williams doesn’t know much about Korzybski’s characterization of humanity as the time-binding class of life, but throughout the book he demonstrates his implicit understanding of the time-binding character of humanity and its incompatibility with Rand’s extreme version of individuality, embodied in the title of one of her books The Virtue of Selfishness. Rand erroneously embraces “[a]n almost universal human trait…the ability to discount the endless contributions of others to our thinking process, while magnifying our own ‘original’ thinking beyond all measure. This is the basis of the American mythos of the ‘Self-made man…”

Rand’s extreme elevation of the virtue of selfishness has no place for altruism at all, at all.  According to Rand, Williams notes, “[o]nly when this awful, ridiculous moral notion of self-sacrifice and altruism is rejected will the thinkers/creators/Atlases be free to create. Until then, Galt [one of Rand’s heros in Atlas Shrugged] says, they’re out.” 

On the contrary, “Man is a SOCIAL animal,” Williams writes, “but Ayn Rand and her adherents insanely reject this fundamental truth. As a result, while a few have enriched themselves, our society is falling apart, and our infrastructure is rotting.” Thus Rand’s work provides the perfect theoretical basis for the current extreme view of individualism supported by ‘tea-party’ advocates, ‘libertarian’ think tanks, and the right-wing Republicans, among others. An example of the latter is former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, a staunch right-wing Catholic, who during the campaign attempted to distance himself from the staunch atheist, Rand, he once admired and touted. But despite his new found love for St. Thomas Aquinas, Ryan still seems to be pushing the virtue of selfishness. Not very christian according to some christian’s measures, but then again, as Williams points out, “nobody ever went broke providing millionaires with a rationalization for the morality of greed.” At the moment, Congressman Ryan seems to be doing quite well. 

The book's title, Ayn Nation Under God, might have been better titled Ayn Nation Under Galt, but then again maybe Hart Williams’ title is appropriate if we accept Albert Ellis's affirmative answer to the question that was also the title of his book critiquing Rand, "Is Objectivism A Religion?" At any rate, Hart Williams' book provides a remarkably non-aristotelian look at what is unfortunately becoming (at least to me) Ayn Nation Under Rand. If you want to understand a great deal more about the present, polarized, aristotelian orientation that dominates the political climate in the U.S. you can't do better than read Hart William's book. My summary and quotes don’t do justice to his writing. He tenders his conclusions with a large portion of supporting detail served with verve and wit in an extremely inexpensive book. All the more reason to get: Ayn Nation Under God

Foreword to the Second Edition of Selections from Science and Sanity

In 2010, Lance Strate, then the Executive Director of the Institute of General Semantics (IGS), and Corey Anton, Series Editor of the IGS's New Non-Aristotelian Library Series, asked me to write this "Foreword to the Second Edition" of Korzybski's Selections from Science and Sanity, originally edited by Guthrie Janssen with Korzybski's consultation and approval. Although I would have advertised that fact and posted this much sooner, a number of unforeseen events intervened that kept me from doing so. But given that this is the 80th Anniversary year of the original publication of Science and Sanity, it seems like a good time to remedy that situation. 

I opine that this new second edition of the authorized abridgment of Korzybski's famous work is not without some graphical design and editorial problems. For one thing, I'm not crazy about the book's large size (11 and 1/2" by 9") or its green cover which I find unattractive. This Second Edition of Selections from Science and Sanity is also missing the original first edition's marginal page references to the unabridged book, which I find regrettable. More seriously, at least one of Korzybski's important diagrams was botched on page 152 by the book designer and appears completely indecipherable. That  designer also originally deleted italics in the text, which Korzybski used for emphasis. This last mistake was later corrected after I pointed it out, but as an writer and editor myself, I know how little slips and creeping errors can corrupt a text, so a thorough editorial run-through with the First Edition seems advisable.

Still, if you haven't read Science and Sanity, I consider this Second Edition of Selections from Science and Sanity most welcome as a readily available, inexpensive, and more inviting (because much shorter) version of Korzybski's great work. So without further ado, here is a link to my "Foreword to the Second Edition of Selections from Science and Sanity". 

The book can  be purchased from the Institute of General Semantics or from Amazon.com. 

The Unity of Human Problems Through Method

Here's the abstract and a link to a final draft of my keynote presentation at the January 14, 2013, Conference on GS and Transdisciplinary Inquiry at CHM College of the University of Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra, India, organized by Deepa Mishra, PhD.  A conference volume is in the works.

My article includes in complete form, a short and previously unpublished essay by Korzybski's co-worker, M. Kendig, entitled "Note on Unity of Problems Through Method", which provided the title and serves as the connecting theme (I think of it as the 'sauce') of my piece. Thanks, dear Kendig.

Abstract: Interdisciplinary. Transdisciplinary. Where did these notions come from? Rigid boundaries often unduly separate different academic departments and fields. How do we get beyond polite general agreement about the need for transcending these boundaries, and actually do it? Korzybski/General-Semantics scholar Bruce I. Kodish discusses a  little-known discipline that does this explicitly, general semantics, a transdisciplinary discipline, i.e., a discipline with tools applicable across many different disciplines. General Semantics (GS) functions more specifically as a meta-discipline, a discipline that provides a formulational framework and a language for understanding and talking about other disciplines. After discussing the core notion of interdisciplinarity (along with related terms), I’ll present an overview of GS, emphasizing some of its interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary aspects. I’ll conclude with some suggestions for how GS can provide tools for interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary ‘thinking’, for better appreciating and making use of the unity of human problems through method. 

The Unity of Human Problems Through Method: Korzybski's General-Semantics as a Transdisciplinary Discipline

From the Stray Thought Bin – 'The Jew'

'The Jew' remains the all-purpose Other. 

From the Stray Thought Bin – The Relativity of Values

The world doesn't look the same to a man and a louse.

Chain Indexing

The Chain Index, which Korzybski developed in the mid-1940s has significantly bedeviled generations of students of Korzybski's work. "Supermoderator" in the RGS forum has done what I rate as a better job of explaining it than even Korzybski did.

The 'chain' part comes from the analogy to the "chain reaction", for example when there is a doubling or other multipication of some process with each iteration of the process, for example, a nuclear or chemical chain reaction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_reaction ).

With the chain index, we make our own little chain reaction of differences, of differentiating one thing in our classification or naming, so one thing becomes two things or more depending on the context of time and place (although the time dimension can be taken care of with the device of dating). Further differentiating as to context, can go on indefinitely, although it is probably often not necessary.

It's not only organism(1)-as-a-whole-in-environment(1) different from organism(1)-as-a-whole-in environment(2). It's every thing-as-a-whole-in-its-environment different from 'itself' in a different environment. Ken Keyes called it the "when index". It remains a matter of assessment to decide whether the differences makes a difference to us or not (in a particular time and location). In other words, our assessments of this should best be chain-indexed as well if we want to remain careful evaluators.

Want to join the chain-indexing gang?

IGS Announces Terrence Deacon Will Be the 61st Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecturer

The Institute of General Semantics has selected anthropologist Terrence Deacon as the 61st Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecturer (AKML).

Dr. Deacon has done groundbreaking work on human origins, the origins of language and human cognition, and the role of culture in evolution. His latest book, Incomplete Nature, has garnered a lot of interest for its cutting-edge  revisioning of basic formulations for human science. His  AKML presentation this October should be very interesting. 

Balvant K. Parekh - Z'L (His Memory a Blessing)

Balvant K. Parekh, founder of Pidilite Industries, major Indian philanthropist, founder of the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, and winner of the IGS 2011 Talbot Winchell Award for service in the interest and promotion of general semantics, died on January 25 in Mumbai at the age of 89. Here is a short obituary.

He had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease for some time and although his condition had gotten worse in the last three months, he had looked forward to my visit to India which he had sponsored. We had been in close contact but I was not able to have a personal meeting with him before his unexpected death. A great and unfortunately rare human being, a humane and caring industrialist, he cared for people above profits, though his business profited greatly through his good works. He was greatly loved  by all of his employees from drivers and cafeteria workers to top-level managers. 

A serious student of korzybskian general-semantics, that work crystalized for him his own philosophy of dedicated service to his employees, customers, and humanity.  

Here is a 2007 video of Mr. Parekh speaking to a group of GS students in India on communication in business. 

Here is a link to an interview with him in a human resources magazine, Human Factors, where he explains his use of GS in his approach to HR (Human Resources) and in dealing with employees needs and concerns during M &A (Mergers and Acquisitions): "Employees Are the Jugular Vein."

May B. K. Parekh's legacy of good works live on.