Off the Map

I’m not on Facebook.  This has been the scourge of some of my friends, who occasionally ask me, exasperated, “So, Ben, are you on Facebook yet??”

Some of these friends are more “e-friends” than “friends.”  They are people with whom I interact online rather than in person.  In our lives, we tend to make distinctions in our lives between “friends” and “acquaintances.”  The word “acquaintance” refers to someone with whom you’re not very intimately associated, while the word “friend” refers to someone with whom you’re a bit more so.

So why do we not distinguish between “friends” and “e-friends”?  Why, do we confuse “social networking” and “e-social networking”?

Just because you can “social network” (interact online with someone) does not mean you have the skills to socialize.

I’ve realized this as I’ve become a better socializer.  In some of my work with Yahoo!, I’ve been forced to go up and meet total strangers over and over again.  I’ve been forced to have conversations with them, share information about something related to Yahoo!, and sustain the conversation for some period of time.

I wasn’t always able to do this comfortably.  I’ve developed the skill.  You start to realize it’s actually not very hard once you thrust yourself into the endeavor.  You learn little tactics here and there that are generally successful.  Maybe you smile.  Maybe you share your name or ask a question.  Maybe you add a little music to your voice.  Each situation has different demands.  But it ain’t rocket science, and you’re probably not going to die from doing it.  However, it may seem a bit like rocket science and it may seem as if you’re putting your head on the guillotine.

Online social interaction–that is, e-social interaction–is a different beast.  People don’t face the same fears when sending an electronic message to someone.  Someone who is deathly afraid of socializing may be immortally courageous in e-socializing.  That is just one reason why “social networking” should not be confused with true socializing.  It should be distinguished by calling it “e-social networking,” or calling it by some other term that implies the electronic component.  Else, we start to identify e-social networking with true socializing and think the abilities are the same.

Given this, they should be called “e-friends” as opposed to “friends.”  Why?  Because according to Facebook, I have zero friends.

I love saying that.  It points out to the hypnotized Facebook user that Facebook-friends are not truly friends.  Many people don’t seem to recognize the difference, at least with their words.  They trumpet the number of friends they have on Facebook as if it is a badge of their social power.  But these people often seem incredibly socially anxious (at least relative to me) and unable to initiate a tiny social interaction without discomfort.

I am missing something by not doing the e-social networking thing.  There are truly wonderful things that can come for participating.  However, at this point, I feel that it will subtract from my life rather than add to my life.  I live a largely meaningful life already.  My time is usually taken up in some way or another with activities related to my interests and goals.  That means little of my time is wasted.  From my perspective, e-social networking will take away from time for my meaningful interests.  It won’t improve my ability to socialize.  I’ll peddle in virtual friendships.  My interest in people will seem large and extensive given a wide network of e-friends, but in reality it probably will turn into a sadly superficial interest in these people.  My knowledge of their lives and feelings will lack depth.  While I might type “!!!” in reference to an event in an e-friend’s life, in reality I might be emotionless and unmoved as I sit at my keyboard reading.  I’m putting up an electronic front, an avatar of excitement.  I can’t pull that wool as easily in true social interaction.

I’m reminded of that time when I felt a stranger of the opposite sex brush me for a second, maybe on the arm.  It was a reminder that there is something to touch that won’t ever be experienced when e-friendship is confused for friendship or e-social networking is confused for socializing.  You can’t touch an e-friend.  You can’t socialize in a virtual network.

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In general semantics, you will hear championed “a process orientation.”  It struck me recently what kind of orientation might contrast a process orientation.  If you haven’t guessed by the title of this entry, it could be the goal orientation.

In my recent life, and less clearly in the last decade, I’ve been focused on the topic of goals.  In my work in long-form improv, I’ve long talked about wants.  Really, I was talking about goals.  I’ve learned over the course that, hey, I’m a goal-oriented person.  By being oriented to goals, I’m able to get so much done in my life and get it done pretty swiftly.  In fact, I regard my goal orientation as one of the secrets to my success.

What does it mean to be “goal-oriented”?  For me, it means I live life ultimately relative to my goals.  I’m not a goal robot by any means, but I focus a lot on my goals and I measure my life and activities against them.  I evaluate my time and other influences on my life relative to my goals.  My value system is hinged upon my goals.  When I change my goals, my values shift.  How I organize my life is hinged upon my goals.  How I organize life shifts when I shift my goals.  I measure people and their influences relative to my goals.  I measure technological devices and their influence relative to my goals.  Ultimately, I am asking the question, “How will this help me achieve my goals?”  I also ask, “Is this interfering with the achievement of my goals?”  I ask, “Should I cut this influence out in light of my goals?” I even ask, “Given my insistence on having this in my life, what does this say about my unconscious goals?”  For me, it often comes back to goals.

Only recently, through the wonderful power of hindsight, have I realized that I’ve applied this goal orientation to long-form improv.  I’ve identified unstated goals in long-form improv, and by identifying them, I’ve made them clear.  By making them clear, I’ve made them more achievable.  I’ve made it so that there is something specific to pursue when performners improvise.  I’ve clarified the pursuit.  So, when improvisers get on stage, their performance is not random and their success is not accidental.  Instead, their performance is organized and their success is regular, and if not regular, it can get more regular with practice.

My goal orientation to long-form improv is largely in contrast to the process orientation that infects long-form improv performance.  Process orientation is definitely of value.  It is of value in the classroom.  In the classroom, you explore your abilities and you avoid judgment.  You see what you’re capable of and experiment with different techniques.  There is no such thing as failure when operating under a process orientation because, note, there is no goal.  You are focused more on the journey than on the apex.

But for the sake of improvisation, a process orientation is not of value in the performance setting.  When you are in an improv group who is up for performance, achieving goals becomes important.  An audience does not come to see process (except maybe in a rare case of an audience of improv connoisseurs).  Instead, they have paid money, even risked money, to see a well-done show.  They generally do not pay money hoping for a show that does not entertain them.  They pay money to see a show that guarantees entertainment.  Their time is important to them, and they don’t want you to waste their time.

In my opinion, the process orientation often developed in improv classes carries over into many improvisers’ performances.  As a result, improv gets a bad name because improv performance diminishes its entertainment value and irritates its audience.  Improv gets a reputation of being “occasionally funny,” or even “rarely funny,” unless a group has a decent reputation.  But even if there are groups with good reputations, the greater whole of improv is frowned upon.  And this is largely the result of an inappropriate emphasis on process when it comes to improv performance.

When we talk about goals and process, we start to get into the realm of meaning.  We call something “meaningful” if it influences the achievement of a goal.  If something has no influence on the achievement of a goal, we call it “meaningless.”

More specifically, we call something “meaningful” if it benefits the achievement of a goal.  That is, if something is seen as meaningful, generally it is not seen as something that obstructs the achievement of a goal.  A minotaur in the maze is meaningful in that it can obstruct the achievement of your goal to exit the maze, but it is not considered meaningful in that it gets in your way.  A doting god would be considered meaningful in that case, especially if that god could get you out of the maze.

With this understanding, what we call “a meaningful life” is really just a life filled with factors that benefit to the achievement of our goals.  Oftentimes a brush with death can trigger the pursuit of a meaningful life.  When we have a brush with death, we start to appreciate the brief amount of time we have in our lives, and decide that we shouldn’t waste that time, and a waste of time would be spending time on things that do not aid in the achievement of our goals.

But what is meaningful to you is not necessarily meaningful to everyone else.  What is meaningful is relative to your goals.  It is not absolute.  When you have a goal, say, to take a shower, particular objects in your life become meaningful to you.  Soap becomes meaningful.  Shampoo becomes meaningful.  A towel becomes meaningful.  But when you change your goal, these objects are not necessarily meaningful.  If your goal is, say, to type this blog entry, soap, shampoo, and a towel become relatively meaningless.  Instead, a computer becomes meaningful.  A keyboard.  Fingers …

Having a goal in improv performance may sound antithetical to the notion of improv.  It may sound as if it makes improv performance planned.  However, it does not.  It makes improv performance no more planned than planning to get on a stage, planning to play characters, planning to do a Harold or play an improv game, planning to address the audience for a suggestion, etc.  This is to say that having goals in improv performance is not any more planned than conventionally accepted planning done for an improv performance.  In fact, having goals in improv performance makes for more meaningful improvising.  Having goals when performing does not mean scripting a scene beforehand, or determining a character beforehand.  Having goals just gives set directions to go in when improvising in a performance.  It forces improvisers to make their improv more meaningful, to evaluate their actions relative to their goals.  Having goals in improv performance is contrasted with not having goals–i.e., revering process.  In such an approach, improvisers usually create improv that lacks a lot of meaning, or when it does become meaningful, it was a rather accidental, “magical” happening.

It should be noted that the need for a goal orientation in improv performance comes from the appreciation that you don’t have all day to perform improv.  You usually have a set amount of time.  And in that set amount of time, you want to engage the audience from beginning to end.  You need meaningful improv, and you need to know how to create it, and you don’t need to be slave to chance.

You wow the audience when your improv is rife with meaning.  If the audience sees a meaningless show–a show that seems to have no respect for any goals–an aimless, drifting show–the audience will want to leave.  Get some goals when you’re out of the classroom and in a performance, make as much as you can do meaningful relative to those goals, and the audience will want to know how you did such a surprisingly successful show.

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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.”

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See also: identification, is-of-identity

I heartily admit that one of my hobbies is of the nerdy sort.  I’ve hobbied in the last couple years in crafting a better definition of general semantics.

A lot of this hobby comes from serving as webmaster for the Institute of General Semantics.  On the homepage of the IGS website, there is a description of general semantics that currently reads:

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General Semantics (or GS) can be referred to as a general system of evaluation and awareness. It provides a systematic methodology to understand how you relate to the world around you, how you react to this world, how you react to your reactions, and how you may adjust your behavior accordingly.

In a couple of published essays and plenty of unpublished correspondence behind the scenes, I’ve been championing a change in that verbiage.  I feel it does not do justice in characterizing general semantics, and actually does harm to general semantics.  I believe that this kind of definition may be the first major orientation many people have to general semantics (given the boom in internet learning over book learning that has occurred in the last decade).  So, I feel it is critical to craft a definition of general semantics here that sets people up better for the topic and doesn’t alienate them (as I feel the current statement on the homepage does).

I crafted a statement this morning that really hit me in a positive way.  Up until this morning, I have dwelled on the relationship language has to general semantics.  I’ve essentially made it primary, even citing the use of the word “semantics” in the name of the field as a reason to focus on language.  I wrote at first:

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General semantics is the study of language and its effects on thinking and behavior.

But suddenly I wondered, What if I flip-flop things a bit?  What if I flip-flopped “language” and “thinking” in this definition?  I did, and I got this statement:

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General semantics is the study of thinking and its effects on language, behavior, and culture.

And it hit me: General semantics is not so much about language as I had thought.  Instead, it is more about thinking than it is about language.  Language is definitely a subject, but it’s less of a subject than thinking.  General semantics pays attention to language, but it more so pays attention to thinking.  That is, the starting point in general semantics is thinking.

At least that is the thought for now.  What this definition does is a number of things for general semantics, as well as a number of things for the Institute of General Semantics:

• It solves the troublesome problem of addressing the place of scientific thinking within the field of general semantics.  The definition essentially sorts scientific thinking (like the general principle of uncertainty, non-elementalism, etc.) under the topic of “thinking.”
• It helps to understand why there’s such an importance placed on sanity.  Sanity has to do with thinking, not so much to do with language.
• It prioritizes the interests in general semantics.  First thinking, then language and/or behavior and/or culture.
• It does not invoke jargon in defining general semantics.  Jargon from general semantics can alienate someone who is just learning about general semantics.  For a number of years general semantics was referred to as “a non-aristotelian discipline.”  Well, if you’ve never heard of general semantics, you’re probably going, “Huh?!”

There are a number of other things this defintion does for general semantics.  In terms of the Institute of General Semantics, it aids the organization in the teaching and promotion of general semantics.  As I see it, it makes general semantics more relevant to people, more attractive in that relevance, and easier to digest and conceptualize.  It prevents general semantics from being marginalized as “just one discipline of many,” but instead the prime field for analyzing the effects of thinking on language, behavior, and culture.  While there may be other fields that analyze the effects of thinking on language, behavior, and culture, this field is founded specifically in the perspective of Alfred Korzybski and related thinkers, and other fields are founded in the perspectives of their respective thinkers.

Although I have characterized the defintion of general semantics as “a hobby,” it is actually quite a serious pursuit for me.  If you have any personal or professional feedback on this entry, feel free to comment below.

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See also: definition, marketing