Off the Map

Today I write what I understand about general semantics (at least as Alfred Korzybski originated it).  Ask me tomorrow and I may have a different understanding!

My challenge here?  To summarize general semantics in just a few sentences.  Here goes.

‘

In order to develop a saner society, individuals must work on their personal sanity.  That requires work on themselves, particularly their thinking and thoughts.  What we call “thinking” and “thoughts” are basically electro-colloidal configurations in the brain.  What we call “unsanity” is presumably the result of trademark electro-colloidal configurations, which are manifest as habits and so-called “disturbance.”  By working on themselves, people can change their electro-colloidal configurations to allow what we call “sanity” to habitually manifest and “disturbance” to disappear.

In particular, work on the understanding of how reality presents itself to their nervous systems (that is, how reality re-presents* itself neurolinguistically in humans) and work at becoming more oriented with non-verbal reality as opposed to verbal reality (which we are more inclined to attend to) can make sizeable progress in rehabituating the unsane individual toward exhibiting sanity.  To aid their work at becoming saner, individuals can add to their speech a  collection of linguistic devices (known as “extensional devices”) that help them to become more oriented to non-verbal reality and less oriented to verbal reality.

The foreseeable result, which admittedly is difficult to achieve, of rehabituating individuals to become saner is a saner society, and even better, a saner humanity.

* I.e., “re-presents,” with a hyphen, in case your line break doesn’t make the hyphen evident.  This hyphen calls attention to the reader that representation is re-presentation (hyphen).  That is, when we are representing something, we are re-presenting it (hyphen), so there is a difference between the original presentation of something and the next presentation of it.  This is my take on Korzybski’s term “abstracting process,” which describes the path reality takes as we process it with our nervous systems.  Korzybski says that reality becomes more and more abstract as we process it; I might say instead that our nervous systems continually re-present reality (hyphen), such that we are never actually presented reality, only re-presentations of it (hyphen).

In this passage, the words in quotation marks I will call “undefined terms.”  Roughly speaking, they are labels for non-verbal reality, and it would be better for me to point to examples of things I call those words than to offer a verbal definition.

But here are some verbal definitions to guide your understanding.  Keep in mind, though, they are overly simple and not exact representations of the words’ referents:

thinking = a generic term representing many mental behaviors like contemplating, reasoning, wishing, etc., not to mention those mental behaviors like sensing, loving, hating, and other so-called “feelings.”  In general semantics, “thinking” and what is often call “feeling” are not seen as empirically divisible; they are so entangled that it is better to see them more as “thinking-feeling” than as separate processes.  Here, the word “thinking” refers both to those processes familiarly called “thinking” as well as those processes familiarly called “feeling.”  Korzybski refers to these processes as “psycho-logical,” intentionally putting in a hyphen in order to emphasize the interconnection of “feeling” (i.e., “psycho”) and “thinking” (i.e., “logical”).

thoughts = a generic term representing the relatively discrete products of the behavior of “thinking” (see “thinking” above).  That is, when we think, the products of our thinking we call “thoughts.”

unsanity = a generic term representing a range of “psychopathic” (i.e., personally destructive) and/or “sociopathic” (i.e., socially destructive) manifestations.  Admittedly, what constitutes “psychopathy” and “sociopathy” is relative to the interests of an individual and the interests of the individual’s society.  That is, what is unsane to one person may not be unsane to the next; what is unsane in one society may not be unsane in the next.  Generally speaking, what constitutes “unsanity” is a number of delusional behaviors that habitually interfere with an individual’s ability to live happily.

sanity = a generic term representing a range of “non-psychopathic” and/or “non-sociopathic” manifestations (see “unsanity” above).  Similarly, what constitutes “sanity” is relative to individual and social interests.  Generally speaking, it refers to the absence of delusional behaviors that interfere with an individual’s ability to live happily.

disturbance = a generic term representing a behavioral manifestation that is peculiar to the surrounding society, and particularly one that is “psychopathic” and/or “sociopathic” in nature.  Think of the familiar term “disturbed” for a sense of this word.  One line of thinking is that what constitutes “disturbance” may be the result of electro-colloidal configurations out of synch with natural electro-colloidal configurations genetic to the individual.  (Cf. No source; that might be my inference from reading general semantics.)

***

Now, could I summarize general semantics even more succintly?  Here is an even shorter, franker summary:

‘

Sanity is a habit.  If you want to get rid of your unsanity, you gotta work to rehabituate yourself.  Your personal work will make a better society.

It doesn’t say as much, but it’s something people don’t always think.  People often think they’re stuck with their thoughts, that they can’t do anything about them.  Well, seen as a habit, there’s the hope that the habits can be reconditioned.  But it’s not just “hope”: In my experience, it’s very possible.  I speak a lot differently as a result of the advice I took from general semantics, and I believe that I stand out as a much saner person as a result.

What might be a verbal definition of “general semantics,” in light of all of the above?  An even more succint summary?

‘

General semantics is sanity engineering.

See also: alfred-korzybski, behavior, disturbance, electro-colloidal-configuration, generic-terms, habits, language-as-generic, sanity, sanity-engineering, thinking, thoughts, unsanity, ways-of-thinking, work