Off the Map

Alfred Korzybski didn’t like the kind of thinking known as identification. He sought to stamp out this problematic thinking habit in people in order to improve their adjustment to the world. Myself, I respect his endeavors and largely, um, identify with them. However, I need to tweak a bit of his war against identification and calm down his concept of the verb “is,” which in Korzybski’s mind seems about half the time to reflect identification.

Identification is the behavior of confusing one thing for another when the things should actually be construed as different. One chief identification noted by Korzybski was “confusing the map for the territory.” To remove that identification from people’s thinking habits, he championed the clause, “The map is not the territory.” Or at least the story seems to go. Korzybski targeted a lot of different kinds of identification, and specifically aimed at teasing out identifications from people’s minds in order for these people to distinguish between two different things that they were problematically seeing as the same. If you can follow the above passage, you’re probably worthy of going forward.

Korzybski looked at language and how language may be negatively influencing our conceptualizations of our world. He noted that as languages developed, oftentimes they were formulated on old, pre-scientific worldviews that ran against more modern, scientific worldviews developed much more recently. If we didn’t revise our language in these respects, so went Korzybski’s logic, we’d be damned to continue to think unscientifically because our language would keep forcing us to. I agree with Korzybski’s amazing observations on this point to a large extent.

One language construct Korzybski attacked was “the is of identity.” Basically, that’s the be-verb that falls between two nouns or noun phrases in a sentence. Examples of statements involving ises of identity include “Ben is a writer,” “You are a reader,” “You are a human,” “I am an idiot,” “I am a genius,” and so on. Korzybski called this be-verb “the is of identity” because he believed the speakers/writers of these sentences were thinking that the subject was absolutely the same in all respects as the direct object. That is, Korzybski believed what was implied in the thinking that led to these statements was the belief that, say, Ben is identical in all respects to a writer.

Korzybski pointed out that actually the terms “Ben” and “writer” represented different numbers of characteristics, and in being identified, we were making a false-to-fact statement. Let’s be a bit arbitrary and say that the term “Ben” stands for 8 million characteristics associated with me, while the term “writer” stands for 10 characteristics. Obviously 8 million > 10, so Korzybski essentially asks, “Why do we talk in a way that suggests 8 million = 10? We should stop talking in that way, and start owning up to the truth that 8 million ≠ 10.”

This is of identity essentially was the hallmark of the thinking habit of identification. In a quantum age, Korzybski argued that no two empircal things were absolutely the same in all respects (differing at very least in space-time), so we should stop believing that any two things are identical. Furthermore, there was much to be benefitted from adopting the view that no two things are absolutely identical, another point I generally accept. Essentially, according to Korzybski, we should start saying “Ben is not a writer.” The implications of that statement are manifold and generally stimulating, but I won’t get into them in this entry.

Only recently have I noticed some problematic thinking that comes from the general semantics aversion to the is of identity. In general semantics, fear of “is” cripples discussions in talking about general semantics, so much so that it makes general semantics murky, confusing, and self-alienating. In efforts to talk about general semantics with laypeople, oftentimes people in general semantics dance around in avoidance of the word “is” in their responses. If they’re asked the unassuming question “What’s general semantics?,” they respond with “General semantics refers to…” or “General semantics may be referred to as …” rather than the more straightforward “General semantics is…” The reasoning to stay away from the latter is that the latter invokes the is of identity. True, it does. However, it does not invoke the kind of identity Korzybski attacked . . .

As you’ve noted in previous blog entries, I’ve pointed out via a simple thesaurus entry analysis that for the term “identity,” there are two distinctly different meanings. One meaning is more along the lines of Korzybski’s meaning, which he explicates as “absolute sameness in all respects.” But another meaning is decidedly different from Korzybski’s meaning. The thesaurus points to a meaning for the term “identity” that is along the lines of “character,” “persona,” “personality,” “individuality,” rather than Korzybski’s “congruence,” “equality,” etc. To sum it up, “identity is not necessarily identity.” That is, we need to make sure to distinguish what kind of identity we have problem with in general semantics.

And the kind we have problem with is the is of equality. That is the is that says 8 million = 10. But we don’t have issue with the other distinctly different is. That’s the is that reads “Ben is a writer” but has no intention to forward any kind of confusion of orders of abstraction. It’s the is that just aims to position Ben in your head. It’s the is that’s aimed at marketing me in a particular way. It’s the is that is creating a concept of me for you to better classify me. I’m calling this is for now, the is of representation, and it’s distinctly different from the is of equality.

Basically, I’m creating categories of ises of identity. Both the is of equality and the is of representation could be thought of as ises of identity, yet the former is the problematic one and the latter is the helpful marketing one. In truth, they aren’t both ises of identity. More accurately, we might say that the first is an is of identity₁, and the second is an is of identity₂. The indices are meant to imply that the different terms have different meanings.

The is of representation in the sentence “Ben is a writer” offers up a representation of me. It gives you a generic facade for me so you know better how to interact with me. You may have no concept of “Ben,” but you probably have a concept of “writer,” so “writer” will represent me for you for now. In more general semantics terms, the relatively few characeristics associated with the term “writer” stand for (represent) me. I could select a different set of characteristics and have those characteristics represent me. For example, I could say “Ben is an actor.” I could say “Ben is a runner.” I could say “Ben is a blogger.” And so on. In these statements, my thinking is not to pass off that I should be confused in concept with a writer, or actor, or runner, or blogger. Instead, in these statements, my thinking is to represent myself in your head in a particular way. I aim to represent myself as a writer, or an actor, or a runner, or a blogger. The is does not imply equality but instead it implies representation.

I may find a better way to talk about this in the future, and I might even change the term from “the is of representation.” It struck me this evening that “the is of representation” is a bit more general and practical term than others I’ve had for this marketing form of “is.”

See also: identification, is-of-identity